


grace under pressure

by whimsicalimages



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angels, Blasphemy, Epic Love, Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reincarnation, Swordfighting, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-21 15:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2473922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalimages/pseuds/whimsicalimages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is an Angel of the Third Heavenly Bureau: the Bureau for Wishes, Curses, and Miscellaneous Spells Gone Awry. Twenty-five years after the last rebellion in Heaven, his days now mostly consist of filling out paperwork, Éponine and Joly yelling at him, Jehan dropping cryptic hints about the future, and furtive visits to Paris to more effectively pine after someone who has never known him in this life. Naturally, this state of affairs doesn’t last long – the world is changing fast, and Grantaire is the lynchpin this time whether or not he thinks it’s a good idea. Spoilers: he doesn’t. </p>
<p>Features a number of long-suffering Angels, oblivious humans, only slightly less oblivious magic users, and possibly a cameo appearance by the Almighty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	grace under pressure

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, friends. This was a hell of a ride. First of all, HUGE thanks to [Phee](http://hawberries.tumblr.com) for the absolutely 10000% amazing [art](http://hawberries.tumblr.com/post/101198477737), go check it out! It's so great I'm actually in awe ♥ Additional thank yous to [M](http://productivity-is-irrelevant.tumblr.com/), for being a Rad Human and agreeing to beta this for me despite its ridiculous length, [A](http://hellaarabella.tumblr.com/) and [M](http://digitalmirth.tumblr.com/) for helping me attempt as much religious respectfulness as possible and not looking at me like I'd grown another head when I asked them weird questions about Christianity, and [J](http://sighsaggressively.tumblr.com/) for encouraging me in this wild venture. 
> 
> The title comes from the eponymous [Elbow song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWCL_cbASR4). Happy reading!

  


The moon is brighter here than it is in Heaven. It should probably stop shocking him by now, but whenever he’s Downstairs he’s caught off-guard by how strongly it shines. Almost two hundred years of flitting back and forth and the amazement still breaks over him like the incoming tide every single time.

His wings are folded neatly to his back as he sits on the fire escape and watches the shifting lump on the bed through the window. Restless again, he thinks. The man needs to sleep more, but Député Lamarque’s office is working overtime after the clusterfuck of the European Parliamentary elections.

Sometimes, he’s grateful that he doesn’t remember what it was like to be human, not in any significant way. He gets scraps occasionally – the proof they needed twenty-five years ago, the gaps in the power of the Archangels. The spots where other stuff, uncensored stuff, filters through; where he remembers grime and fire on the narrow streets of Paris-that-was. Then again – maybe their power has simply faded after the Rebellion, though twenty-five years is nothing but a blink in their long existences. He never gets more than flashes, anyway. It doesn’t matter.

The lump moves again. Grantaire wishes, not for the first time, that he could use his Angel’s Gift to nudge Enjolras into a gentler sleep, to Create a path there for him somehow, but using enough to do that would give him away. He would lose Enjolras again.

He’s not sure he can handle that.

The Third Heavenly Bureau: Wishes, Curses, and Miscellaneous Spells Gone Awry. Grantaire and Joly call themselves the “Heaven-Fucked-Up Bureau” in undertones, but they know Fantine, their Bureau Chief, agrees with them. She knows exactly where they all stand.

When the humans got out of the Dark Ages and understood that magic could be harnessed and put to good use, magic users became a prize, and their little Bureau was created – third and last of the Heavenly Bureaus, meant to deal with and distribute Heaven’s own justice in a world where magic flowed freely and curses could be lobbed in any direction.

Angels were always meddlers at heart, thinks Grantaire, which is what got them into this Bureau shit in the first place. Magic users were generally the offspring of Angels who’d dallied with humans, realized they were responsible for a new life, and subsequently been cast out – though some insisted the descendant magic users were reborn Angels. The Heaven Fucked Up Bureau, cleaning up all the shit that was caused by Heaven fucking up in the first place.

So – they get cases, usually not ones they give a shit about, and they all have Gifts that equip them to deal with those cases. People getting hit with accidental spells and curses, people’s wishes coming true in horrible ways because they didn’t know they had a bit of magic in them, and so on. Grantaire can Create, Joly can Mend, and Fantine can Command, as all the Bureau Chiefs can. Of course, his version of Creation is very different from that of the Lord – Grantaire’s is smaller, he needs his hands and his tools. Most of the time, he needs a plan and a method. He’s no God. He’s just kind of special.

Anyway, it’s work. It keeps things from getting so boring that there’s another Rebellion, he supposes. It makes Angels too busy for any considerations of “true freedom.”

Last time they’d worried about that, it hadn’t exactly led anywhere good. Revolutions rarely do, Grantaire supposes – freedom is all relative, and free will is a commodity which Angels are not afforded. It’s not in the job description.

Their purpose is to serve, to keep humanity on track; _nisi Dominus frustra_ , and all that. He’d chosen this path when he died – they all had – so he has nothing to complain about.

It’s fine, really. He’s fine. If he tells Joly that enough times a day, maybe he’ll start believing it himself.

The Third Angelic Rebellion, human year 1989: three makes a pattern, Grantaire thinks. Three means something really has been going wrong – and it’s not their side. They aren’t wrong. Enjolras isn’t wrong.

He’s only heard stories about the First and Second, but the Third makes him glad that they were only stories. He can’t imagine living through more than one coming of Hell to Heaven, with Angels fighting one another all around him, swords blurring together and crimson staining the sky. His heart hurts. He’s afraid.

He’s not terrified for himself, not afraid of losing his own wings – so long as his friends get to keep theirs. So long as Enjolras gets to keep his.

Fantine is the one who finds him first, separated and trying to fight his way back to the core of the battle, where his friends are. Every drop of angelic blood spilled stings on his skin and he can’t help wincing. He’s a painter, a fixer, he never wanted to use his sword to fight – he’s only drawn it a few times in two centuries of Angelic existence. His gift is Creating, not tearing and destroying. This war, this battlefield – he doesn’t belong here.

Enjolras had told him that, but he hadn’t listened. Spent so much damn time trying to prove him wrong, and not nearly enough trying to protect him.

“Grantaire, be still and put down your sword,” Fantine says, and he can’t help but turn and listen. No true free will, he thinks to himself, bitterness shooting through him. Fantine ranks higher than he does and he’s in her Bureau; she can Command him to do whatever she says, as long as he can hear her. She’s laced her voice with her Gift, and for one horrible moment he resents her for it as he lowers his sword. He loves Fantine, would never lift a finger against her, but in that moment he feels like she’s ripping him apart down the middle, and he hates her and he hates himself for it. “In one minute, you will be given a task, and you must stay here to hear it.”

Where Fantine is, Valjean is sure to follow; they run different Bureaus, but they function as a team. Grantaire doesn’t ask why Valjean isn’t taking care of his own – why they went to him first, and not Enjolras. He knows he’s the easier target, and they know he knows.

“We are taking care of our own,” Valjean says, in answer to the question he never voiced. No private thoughts, either, with Bureau Chiefs who can read your mind – no freedom, no idyllic Heaven. “We will send as many of you as we can reach away. You know this is a hopeless cause – you can’t win against the Archangels, and you do not live a bad life. You, of all of us, know these things. Don’t fight this now. Grant yourself more time. We’re trying to help you.”

Grantaire sighs, looking away. “I, of all of us,” he says, soft. They stay in a bubble of calm while the outskirts of the battle move slowly past them. He should be at Enjolras’ side, defending him while he fights in his clean, precise way, blood not staining his already-crimson blade. His wings twitch, and he feels a headache coming on as he tries to resist the Commands and move away. “Yes, I know you’re right. We don’t live a bad life. But as Enjolras would say – we also don’t live a free life, and freedom’s worth much more than comfort.” A vague sense of amusement rises in him at the idea that at the very last, he is stuck repeating Enjolras’ words. Always an echo, and he doesn’t even believe it.

“This is for the best,” Fantine says, sadness blooming in her eyes. “We are saving your wings.”

“You know I would be cast down a hundred times for Enjolras to keep his wings,” he says, and he knows his voice carries quietly through their cleared space.

Valjean looks at him with so much pity lacing his features that Grantaire has to look away. “They know, my friend. The Archangels know, and that is why you must stay, and he must be reborn. That’s why we’re saving you. The laws here will not change, but notice – your friend Jehan is not on the field. They are a Prophet – they have seen this, and knew they had to wait. This is prophecy – it can’t be fought, not as we are now. Enjolras can only be the catalyst for what comes next if he is a part of the human world, not our world.”

That’s not true, Grantaire wants to say, Angels have been changing the human world, changing prophecy and bending it to our own whims since the beginning of time, I know, just let him stay here, I would trade any life I had for him to stay in Heaven, change Heaven, rip it down, anything, but Fantine is already talking again –

“A human child in Argentina has been cursed by her father in a moment of anger to a life of illness after her mother died in childbirth. I have chosen to hear his prayers, and therefore I have chosen you to resolve this matter in the way of Angels. Go to him now, and see that he fixes what he has wrought. It will take you exactly three days.”

Before he is pulled away by the order’s wording – no free will, he can already feel the tug, prepares himself for the snap of unwilling transportation – he sees Enjolras turn to see him struggling, trying to burn free of the Command with the Light of his Gift. Grantaire writhes, knowing he’s casting stark shadows around himself as he pushes, and Enjolras begins to move his way, precious seconds not on their side. He is so beautiful and so brave, his mouth turned fiercely down as his wings carry him closer, willing to fight even for cynical pacifist Grantaire who has never been part of his innermost circle, who has been content to watch from afar and quietly betray the service of the Lord for the best reason he’s ever met, passionate and enormous and lodged in his chest. Staining his own hands with Angels’ blood out of loyalty for their leader but not their lost cause must have finally won Enjolras’ respect, and he is flying but Grantaire already knows he’ll have disappeared by the time Enjolras gets to him. The red he can see on Enjolras’ wings is not his blood, it can’t be. Grantaire refuses to believe it. Even after what Valjean had said, Enjolras is still so bright. He is still invincible – his blood will not spill because it cannot. Grantaire reaches out, body straining to go where it no longer can, and there’s a too-brief warmth against his fingers before he finds himself ripped down to Earth.

He crumples to the ground, sword falling out of his fingers for good and melting into the pavement, no longer called upon. There is wetness at the corners of his eyes, and it hits him that he doesn’t remember the last time he cried. It was probably when he was human, long ago. He doesn’t really recall – only sees dirt under his fingernails through the saltwater blurring his vision.

He knows that when his three-day mission is up and he returns, Enjolras will be gone.

In 2014, he’s just allowed his eyes to close when there’s a tap on his shoulder and he startles, feathers ruffling. Éponine looks back at him, calm, her own wings folded as she balances on the railing of the balcony.

“I know I tell you this often, but I’m hoping that if I say it enough, you’ll understand that you need to stop doing this to yourself,” she says, soft. The moon throws her features into sharp relief, and Grantaire’s fingers itch for charcoals. All he has is his Creator’s Light, and he uses that as sparingly as possible when he’s not on official Heavenly business; the Archangels will notice if he uses too much, and he doesn’t need their questions.

“I’m not doing anything to myself,” he replies, spreading his palms. “Can’t an Angel catch some sleep on a nice balcony?”

“Not on this nice balcony,” she says. “And we don’t need sleep. He’s a mortal now, R. You can’t go revealing yourself to him, and you can’t keep pining like this. You’re driving me mad by proxy, and I know damn well how it feels to be in love with someone incapable of loving you back.”

Grantaire sighs. “At least you can help Marius with your Gift. You can Protect him. It’s your damn job,” he says. “I can’t even use mine to Create anything for him, because the Archangels will know. I’m not even supposed to be here.”

Éponine hugs her arms to her chest and frowns as he pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it with a tiny flame from the tip of his finger. “Yeah, and mine doesn’t need Protecting yet, beyond from his angry asshole grandfather. Fat lot of good either of us are doing. Also, smoking makes you smell disgusting. You’ll make Upstairs reek with your nicotine and your human fetish.”

“I could say the same about you, and it isn’t like drinking will do anything for me. Besides, he’s not a fetish,” Grantaire mumbles around the cigarette. If he could Create something for Enjolras, he thinks, he’d give him a garden on his balcony and fill it with the tallest sunflowers, as impossible and bright and beautiful as Enjolras himself has managed to be in every lifetime. “He’s _Enjolras._ It took me a decade and a half to find him, and I’ve done nothing for another decade but watch. Why are you telling me this now?”

She takes a deep breath. Éponine has the most steel in her out of all of them. “Marius is friends with Enjolras and they’re both in politics, and I know Montparnasse is planning something in concert with his Protected, who is apparently on the opposite side of some European political conflict.”

Grantaire feels his eyes widen. “Humans have political conflicts all the time. Montparnasse revealed himself to his Protected?”

She cringes. “It would seem so,” she says. Last time someone had revealed themselves to a human and tried to blend magics, it’d been ugly and dangerous. So many human lives gone, all for some careless Angel who’d had nothing to lose – Angel magic isn’t the same as human magic, for all that it might be a predecessor thereof. “Might be something big coming. A big curse, a big storm, I don’t know yet. Seemed fair to warn you. One Bureau to another.” She hesitates. “One friend to another. I want you to move on, Grantaire. We’re going to need everyone, if I’m right. No last-minute defecting.”

He pinches out his cigarette and drops it on the ground, grinding it in. “I’ve been reading human fantasy novels again,” he says, in lieu of a response.

Éponine rolls her eyes, but allows the subject change. “Anything interesting?”

“There’s a good series being released now – author’s a smart guy, I hear he’s got a bit of magic to him. Some great quotes about suns and candles.”

“Shut up,” Éponine says, smacking him in the shoulder, but then she turns serious again. He’s never liked her being serious. She deserves all the joy and laughter in the world. “And honestly, tread lightly. There’s too much tension Upstairs right now for it not to snap – and soon. Be careful, R.”

He waves her off. “When am I not?”

She huffs, and shakes her head. “Goodbye, R. See you around.”

He watches her as she launches off the balcony and into the sky. She’s probably off to check on her own hopeless case. He shrugs to himself, and lets his head fall back against the wall, eyes once again tracking to the lump on the bed. It’s probably nice to sleep, even with restless dreams. He doesn’t remember what it’s like, but he thinks it must be nice.

Angels don’t need sleep, but he’s always so tired.

The Second Heavenly Bureau: Law and Protection. Second created, and second in importance.

There were certain humans who Heaven found to be – useful. They fit into the Grand Design in some ideal way. Frankly, it was all bullshit. Grantaire’d never paid that much attention to it, but it effectively meant that some Angels were assigned to guard certain humans from harm in accordance with the stipulations of various prophecies.

Éponine had been assigned Marius a few years ago, and it nagged at Grantaire that he couldn’t quite place the man. His face was familiar, but he hadn’t been an Angel; Grantaire’s working theory is that he knew Marius when he was alive himself. That’s his working theory for most weird memory things, but as with those other things, it’s impossible to prove from the scenes that only rarely appear in his mind, like an overlay out of a history book.

About a year into her most recent stint at Protection, Éponine fell in love with Marius. It’s probably going to rip her apart whenever the assignment ends, but Grantaire knows she’s strong. She’ll pull through. They’ll have to live and see.

In any case, he doesn’t think she has any right to be commenting on his sneaky habits, considering she knows that if she were to reveal herself to Marius, Heaven would rip her wings off. There are already too many powerful human magic users to clean up after; new Angel-human mixing is the last thing the Archangels want. Angels who completely revealed themselves on Earth never fared well in Heaven for very long after.

At least they’re both after humans they can’t have. It makes things a little easier to bear, he thinks, to be in good company.

After the Third Rebellion, it took him years to find Enjolras again; he only figured out later that he wasn’t supposed to at all, that he was supposed to forget. The Rebellion had been softened in all the participant Angels’ minds – the Archangels covering the evidence of their third failure at ironclad control.

The memory was softened, but he couldn’t forget. A red cloak and a golden laugh, the strongest will of any of them. Before, when Enjolras was one of the Angels in Valjean’s service at the Bureau of Protection, he had been called the Red Guardian. He was their best Protector – the one who was called in when others were not quite strong enough, not quite determined enough, not quite fast enough.

In the years that followed the Rebellion, he was only whispered of as the Red Martyr by those youngest Angels who hadn’t seen as much bloodshed. They didn’t fear as much, and they didn’t think that the wrath of the Archangels extended to reprimanding hushed voices speaking of free will in the darkness. They also didn’t think that Enjolras made it down to Earth to be reborn. They didn’t think much, still settling into the widths of their wings.

Grantaire knew better. He didn’t speak of Enjolras by any name, he completed the missions he was given, and when he had the time, he searched. Tracking a newborn was difficult in a world with endless humans created every day, thousands upon thousands of new points of light – especially difficult when that newborn might look like anyone. It was downright unlikely that he’d look like the Enjolras of Grantaire’s fuzzy memory, all golden and righteous in the fire of the morning sun, red-and-gold sword flashing around him in elegant arcs as he fights.

At ten years it began to feel like hoping that Enjolras was alive was a fruitless, impossible dream – but the idea that he was gone was more impossible still, so he kept looking.

All he had to go on was the name, but Enjolras wasn’t exactly common. Grantaire just had to hope that it was enough.

Names are powerful things, whether for Angels or humans – the Second Rebellion had happened when the Archangels tried to institute a system of naming the new Angels so they would have no ties to their previous lives at all. It had been before Grantaire was ever Upstairs, before he was even born as a human, he thinks, but if it had been anything like the Third Rebellion, there was probably too much blood for him to stomach.

Though he had a rare name, Enjolras would be too young yet to have a line in any phonebook, though that didn’t stop Grantaire from looking. Names keep, if they are enough a part of the soul.

Fantine never told him not to do it, though he knew that she knew he was looking.

“I had a love once,” she’d said, grim-faced after he returned from that horrible mission that had taken him off the battlefield. He’d thrown some Light into the shape of a ragged tree stump and sat against it, staring at the sky around him and wondering how humans moved on from this – from death, from grief and loss. From pain. Fantine found him after a while, not saying anything about the gnarled oak he was leaning on. If she’d asked, he couldn’t have told her if it was hours or days that he’d sat there; time passes differently Upstairs. “I can’t assure you that you will have others, as Prophecy was never my gift. However – all things suffered for God have merit in God’s sight. There is always a chance that you will meet him again.”

“Am I supposed to remain here for a chance?” he’d asked, idly throwing a ball of Light between his palms and considering molding it into another tree branch. He’d always wondered if being unnecessarily cryptic is something they taught the Archangels and Bureau Chiefs from the beginning of their appointments.

Fantine had sat beside him, carefully avoiding contact. She outranked him, but she was sorry about the mission. He was sorry, too. “Where else would you go?”

“Hell,” Grantaire had said, no hesitation. “They would help me find him. You and I both know it.”

“And then they would take your wings and cast you into the fires for the crime of being an Angel,” she’d said. “I tell you now that there is a chance here, and you have to live for it. Stay for it. It’s the best reason there is.”

Grantaire had closed his eyes and let the Light fade back into his hand. “Perhaps,” he said, and didn’t shrug her off when she pressed her lips to his temple.

“Give it time,” she’d said.

He had a surplus, anyway.

Bahorel had been Downstairs throughout the fighting, his Protected keeping him there, so he hadn’t actually been party to more than the planning stages. He’d wanted to fight, but they were still Angels, and they were still duty-bound to prevent the deaths of innocent humans. Joly was the only other Angel who remembered the Rebellion as well as Grantaire did, remembered both the fighting and the getting whisked away by Fantine’s orders.

“You know,” Joly had told him, coming to visit him at his stump a few days or maybe a few minutes after Fantine, “I wish I could get drunk.”

Grantaire had hummed, eyes closed. “Can’t drink away the survivors’ guilt even if you’re a human, Joly,” he said.

“Humans don’t drink to get rid of emotions permanently,” Joly said. “They drink to make it easier to forget them for a while, and I’d be much happier if I could fucking forget them. Archangels can’t do shit right, not even wipe memories. You hear me? I hope you smite me where I stand, you fuckers.” He lowered his voice, words choked out. “It would probably hurt less than this.”

He sounded like he was crying. Sometimes, Grantaire forgot that they’d all lost people – that’s what wars do, whether human or Angel. Everyone’s got lost people. “Hey,” he said, and pulled Joly over, hugging him tightly. “Hey, listen, it’ll be all right.”

“It won’t be,” Joly said, fingers clutching at Grantaire’s shoulders. “They’re gone, and we don’t know if we’ll ever meet them again, and even if we do, they won’t remember us. It won’t be all right.”

Bossuet laughing, twin delighted looks on Joly’s and Musichetta’s faces, Grantaire’s half-memory supplied. A friend, Courfeyrac, grinning hugely and ruffling Joly’s hair. Enjolras writing notes, Enjolras arguing tactics, Enjolras brilliant as a lightning storm.

The jagged tree stump he’d made had sprouted a long sapling, thin branches stretching out over their heads to try and protect them without any real input from Grantaire. His control is shot. “You’re right,” he said. “It won’t be all right.”

“I’m always right, and nobody ever listens to me. Things won’t be all right. But we’ll be okay, eventually, I think. Things heal,” Joly said, and if he didn’t let go for a while as he muffled his sniffles, Grantaire wasn’t going to call him out on it.

“Yeah,” Grantaire said, trying to believe it himself. “Yeah, we’ll be fine.” 

Grantaire was, in the end, a selfish creature. He stayed Upstairs, but he still searched.

He looked through every birth registry in every paper he can find, but his instincts told him he should stick to France. He hid out in countless corners listening to “What are we going to name the child?” conversations and feeling like the worst sort of desperate. He didn’t ever hear what he wanted to hear, and the world churned on.

He knew Fantine and Valjean worried about him – it took a while to completely forgive them for ripping him away from the battle, but Fantine was still his Chief and one of the best beings he’d ever met, still gave him cases to work on, even if none of them caught his attention. It wasn’t unlikely that she knew and she was giving him boring stuff, work he could finish early, on purpose. She’d had a love once, after all.

The years kept passing, and all he had to go on was a memory of red and gold.

It was almost sixteen years before he finally found him – by chance, in a tiny Parisian park in gloomy January of 2005. Grantaire had tried the internet by then, but it hadn’t helped; he’d thought, in a moment of true despair, that names had ceased to hold their power and Enjolras could be going by any name, impossible to find.

But no; he was still Enjolras, and Grantaire saw him and immediately _knew._ It wasn’t any of that trite love-at-first-sight shit that some humans believed in, it was just – the moon was brighter on Earth than in Heaven, the winters in Oslo were harsh, and Enjolras was once again standing so close to him and shining so radiantly that Grantaire thought he might combust. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten the light. Everything was bared in sharp edges after years of seeing in muted pastels.

Grantaire was there because Feuilly was there, and Feuilly wished very hard for her family to be happy like the families on TV commercials, in the way that teenagers sometimes do. Feuilly had magic, so – things didn’t go the way she planned, and Grantaire was Downstairs, following her around and trying to figure out how to Create a path for the family to go back to how it was before.

Feuilly was sobbing into Enjolras’ shoulder, and Enjolras looked like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Grantaire would have found it hilarious, but he was too near for the first time in such a long time – he couldn’t focus on Feuilly, despite the pull of Fantine’s marching orders.

It was the only time he remembers coming close to unwittingly revealing himself. He hadn’t been this caught off guard in years; the punishment for those of his Bureau who reveal themselves is usually much less severe than the others – spells and curses oftentimes can only be lifted by their casters or those with far more power, like Angels, and it’s fucking hard to maintain a full glamour while undoing complex magic. But – he didn’t particularly want to test that, especially when he’d finally found Enjolras again. He was too selfish to relinquish the case to someone else, anyway, even if he was emotionally compromised by this turn of events.

He shook the shock off as Enjolras patted Feuilly’s back, awkward and fumbling. “You didn’t mean to do it,” he was saying. “Wishes that go badly get resolved sometimes, you know? Just wait a little bit.”

Grantaire grimaced, shifting his weight as his wings rustled near-silently. Their success rate was high, but not all the bad wishes need to be resolved for the sake of the Plan – some ruin people’s lives and never get fixed, and they have to be okay with that. They aren’t the architects of destiny, though the Archangels certainly do their damn best to be.

Feuilly stiffened and nodded, coming to some realization. Sometimes, Grantaire wished he could read minds – but that wasn’t his Gift. It would go a long way for trying to heal people, though. The Bureau Chiefs could do it, and most of the Prophets. “You’re right,” she said, balling her hands into fists and standing up straight. “Thanks, Enjolras. It’ll be okay.”

If Enjolras was confused by the sudden turn of events, he stifled it. “Good luck,” he said.

“Thank you,” Feuilly repeated. If Grantaire concentrated, he could see the magic hovering around her in moon-colored strands, quivering with power – she was going to be a very strong magic user in a few years. “I’ve got to go. See you at school tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Enjolras said, giving a half-wave and pulling a book out of his backpack. Grantaire wanted to reveal himself right then, go down to his knees in front of this teenage human and ask him to remember, to forgive his failure and his unwilling betrayal, but he pushed it away. That was another life, and he couldn’t now. He had to follow Feuilly.

He watched Enjolras for as long as he could as they walked away.

The next time after Éponine’s visit, a week later in twilit June, it’s Jehan who finds him perched on the balcony. They have a hard time getting away from their Bureau, usually, since it’s the smallest.

Enjolras is home early, shockingly enough, furiously typing something on his laptop as the sun sets and the shadows slowly pass into his apartment. Grantaire hopes he’ll sleep peacefully tonight, exhausted as he knows Enjolras must be, getting up early and sleeping so late and drinking far more coffee than can possibly be healthy. The man is always running on so little, and Grantaire can’t do anything to help besides hope things get better – he’s no Protector, it’s not his job to save Enjolras from himself or anyone else. Even his being here is a particular form of masochism. Hope’s all he’s got, not that it’s ever changed much of anything.

“You may not be a Protector, but you’ve got plenty of reason to hope,” Jehan says from behind him, having flown up without him noticing. He barely flinches, but he’s getting sloppy. Always was, where Enjolras was concerned, loathe as he is to admit it.

“I hate it when you do that,” Grantaire grumbles.

Jehan laughs, a wind chime in the approaching night. “Can’t help it,” they say. “You think loudly. And anyway, I’m serious. You’ve got a lot to be hopeful for.”

“Care to elaborate?” Grantaire asks, brow furrowing.

“Just trust me,” Jehan says, turning blind, milky-white eyes to him. “‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ and all that.”

Grantaire snorts. “Don’t quote the Bard out of context at me, Jehan, I remember exactly how that one ends,” he says. “And I’ve had far too much of being Horatio. Do you know, now they’re theorizing Shakespeare had a bit of magic?”

Jehan nods, allowing the redirect. “Probably some remnant of a Creator’s Gift, like yours,” they say. “Anyway, just dropped by to say hello. Also, that you’re safe for now. The future holds up even with you fucking everything up down here.”

“Jehan,” Grantaire chides. “What improper language. Don’t they teach you not to say shit like that in Prophet school?”

They raise their eyebrows. “The Powers that Be don’t care how we say it, as long as what we say is accurate. I’ve used the word ‘clusterfuck’ to describe any number of prophecies so far this year alone, and we’re only halfway through 2014.”

Grantaire laughs properly for the first time in what feels like a long while. “What’ve they got you doing now?” he asks.

Jehan shrugs. “I’ve got a break,” they say. “And you know I can’t tell you what I was working on before, because you’re not supposed to know.” They smirk. “That would defeat the purpose, my friend.”

Grantaire huffs in mock outrage. “Nobody tells me anything,” he complains. “You know, ‘Ponine was here too, and she was also being vague-yet-menacing.”

Jehan gives him a genuine smile, then. “We’re all just looking out for you, R,” they say. “Trust us. Trust me. I’m not doom and gloom like you and Éponine, but I do know what I’m talking about.”

“I know,” Grantaire says, patting Jehan’s shoulder lightly. He looks out at the changing sky. “It just feels like something’s coming.”

“Something big,” Jehan agrees. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

The First and most powerful Heavenly Bureau: Prophecy. Jehan is the only one he knows in it – they’re a small outfit that a huge amount of influence is vested in. All of the Angels in the First Bureau are Gifted with the ability to predict what’s coming, up to a point, and to nudge it in the direction of whichever future the Archangels prefer. Not that that’s always the one that turns out good for everyone – it was one of Enjolras’ main complaints before the Rebellion, Grantaire remembers. It compounds on the idea that they don’t have free will and expands it to encompass the humans they serve and protect, he’d said, and Grantaire had agreed with him for once. He doesn’t much like the idea of destiny; it’s never been good to him.

He doesn’t regret the Rebellion. He regrets not making Enjolras understand that Grantaire wanted him to be right.

Even if Enjolras remembered him – which, incidentally, he can’t, because he’s been reborn into a new life with new memories – he’d probably hate him for leaving, not knowing he’d been torn away unwillingly. So, Grantaire supposes, it’s probably good that he doesn’t, despite the fact that it feels a little bit like he’s choking every time he so much as glances in Enjolras’ direction.

Jehan’s advice of keeping his hope alive makes it a little worse, truth be told.

Anyway, nobody’s seen the First Bureau Chief in years, but it’s rumored that she’d been exiled rather than cast down after participating in the Third Rebellion. Jehan’s always avoided talking about it, though Grantaire got the impression that it all had something to do with Éponine. In any case, he’d never known their Chief in the first place. It’s also possible she was wiped from his memory the way they couldn’t manage to wipe away Enjolras.

The Prophets know more than anyone else about everything, but they also aren’t allowed to tell other Angels much, besides reprimanding them if they aren’t following the divine plan, or whatever. Grantaire just tries to stick to Jehan’s good side and hope for the best. He’s not a big fan of determinism.

He only really started to suspect that the universe was playing one huge cosmic joke on him when, two years and five assignments after he sorted out Feuilly, he was assigned to help a kid named Combeferre shake off a curse and found Enjolras busting down his assignment’s door at 2AM. Angels didn’t sleep, but he was pretty sure 18-year-olds did – especially ones who just moved into their dormitories, were supposed to be starting college in four days, and still needed to get themselves rid of a bad spell cast by an asshole from summer classes.

Grantaire watched, careful and quiet in the shadows, as Combeferre groaned and threw an arm over his eyes while Enjolras’ pounding at the door continued.

“I know you’re in there, Combeferre, we’re going to fix this! I can help you!” Enjolras yelled.

“You can’t see me right now, Enjolras,” Combeferre yelled back. “If you look at me, you’ll get sick.”

He’d been right, but good advice had never stopped Enjolras from doing anything foolhardy. Not in any life Grantaire remembered, at least.

“I’m wearing a blindfold, I know what I’m doing!” Enjolras said, and the obstinate bastard actually was. It was a pretty bad curse, and Grantaire hadn’t quite figured out where to apply his Gift yet to fix it. He didn’t often have to Create his way out of a curse that impacted people around someone rather than attacking the person themselves. Most curses were more straightforward and less annoying, and now rash, stubborn Enjolras was in danger because of this bullshit.

He let out a low growl, soft enough that the humans couldn’t hear. Fucking Enjolras.

“I’m not letting you in,” Combeferre said, and bless his heart, he thought that’d stop the dumbass who was already pressing a paperclip into the lock, blindfold up and tongue sticking out in concentration. Grantaire valiantly resisted the urge to grind his teeth. He’d forgotten how foolish a determined Enjolras could act – no wonder that on Joly’s worst days after the Rebellion, he bemoaned becoming friends with anyone who was such a danger to themselves and those around them.

The lock clicked, and Combeferre dove into the hall closet, holding the door closed with all his weight. Enjolras walked in frowning, looking around and not finding his friend. “Combeferre?” he asked.

“Go away,” Combeferre said. Smart kid.

Enjolras pursed his lips and tugged the blindfold over his eyes again. Grantaire may or may not have reached out and pulled the knot a little tighter; Enjolras may or may not have twitched and run a hand through his hair, almost catching Grantaire’s fingers.

“I’m blindfolded, I can’t see a thing, come on,” he said.

Combeferre let out a breath of defeat, and Grantaire stood silent and frustrated while he peeked out of the closet and saw Enjolras, all crossed arms and haughty frown. Combeferre opened the closet all the way and stepped out. “You really should leave,” he said.

Enjolras scowled. “We’re going to break this curse,” he said, and then lowered his voice to add, “without any supernatural intervention.”

Alarm bells started ringing loud and clear in Grantaire’s head, and he began to edge away, panic slipping through his mind. Angels – does Enjolras mean Angels? He can’t, Grantaire thought, he just means magic, humans can’t know. They aren’t supposed to see. There are always rumors, but humans aren’t meant to have definite knowledge. That’s why Upstairs gets so mad at dalliances – they don’t play into the Plan.

Combeferre frowned. “You know as well as I do that even if magic were an option, we’d need someone way more powerful than anyone we know. Or the guy who put the spell on me, but I don’t think Babet is going to be amiable to lifting his stupid prank.”

“I didn’t mean human magic,” Enjolras said, soft and lethal at all of eighteen years into his new human life. Grantaire swore he was going to find an exit strategy in the next thirty seconds, then get the fuck out of there, Combeferre or not. He didn’t think it was safe for him to hear this. He didn’t think it was safe for them to have this discussion at all, but he couldn’t exactly stop it.

Combeferre crossed his arms, then uncrossed them quickly when he remembered that Enjolras couldn’t see, anyway. “Not Angels again,” he said. “They don’t exist, Enjolras. It’s an impossibility.”

“They really do, Feuilly can hear them,” Enjolras insisted. “She found a wing feather on her pillow after her wish got reversed a while ago, it didn’t get there on its own. Regardless, Angels or no Angels, we’re going to fix this. I can’t go around not being able to see my best friend ever again, now can I?”

Grantaire’s heart sped up and he cursed elaborately in his head. Leaving tokens for those he helped had always been a foolish gesture of his. His feathers always grew back, and he wanted people to know they weren’t alone – idiot, idiot, sentimental _idiot._ He knew other Angels who did it, who didn’t think there was anything wrong with a little reminder that they’re part of the same world. Feuilly had seemed perceptive, but not dangerously so; he wished he’d been more careful.

“A bird flew into her window,” Combeferre said, and Grantaire felt absurdly grateful for him. “There are a million explanations besides weird winged magical people from Heaven coming down here to fix things. And we’ll try, but for now, please stay away. I mean it. I won’t be the cause of any of you getting sick. Don’t make me force you out.”

Enjolras shifted mutinously. “We’re going to ask around and see if we can dig anything up on the internet,” he said. “We’ll help you, Combeferre, I promise.”

He stuck out his hand, a vow. Combeferre’s lips thinned, but he shook it. “Fine. I’m going back into the closet, and you need to leave my apartment when I’m in there. Seriously,” he said. “I’m not hurting you, even unintentionally as whatever kind of Medusa-lite I am.”

Grantaire spent another moment being thankful for Combeferre’s existence as he did as promised, hiding himself again. Enjolras pulled off the blindfold, parts of his hair sticking up from the rough treatment. “I know,” he said. “Goodbye, Combeferre. I’ll be back when we have something.”

And therein lies the crux of the problem, Grantaire thought, burying his head in his hands as Enjolras let himself out. Combeferre waited a few minutes, then cautiously scanned his surroundings and stepped into the room again. If Grantaire couldn’t fix this, it had the potential to end very badly.

“I know something you don’t,” Jehan sing-songs next time he sees them, a short few days after the second balcony incident. Grantaire’s Upstairs for a few days, doing paperwork – it’s Heaven, you’d think they would have gotten rid of paperwork as something clearly Hellish – and seeing how long his willpower lasts in his latest attempt to quit checking on Enjolras.

“Don’t you always,” Grantaire mumbles, paying attention half to Jehan and half to the bureaucratic nonsense in front of him. He hates paperwork. Everyone hates paperwork, but he thinks filling out the same forms for two centuries has taken a unique psychological toll.

“Well, yes,” Jehan admits. “But this time in particular, it’s something that actually concerns you, which is why we’re having this nice chat right now. Also, because I wanted to tell you personally that you smell like a human's ashtray.”

Grantaire looks up, giving them his full concentration. “Are you going to tell me why else you’re here?” he asks after the silence stretches.

“I can’t yet,” they say. “But it’s going to shake things up around this old place.”

Grantaire turns back to the papers. “We both knew that already.”

Jehan ignores the dismissal for what it is. “Grantaire,” they say, seating themselves in his lap and pressing a finger to his lips, features solemn. “I’m warning you again because I need you to know that you’re a centerpiece this time. It’s going to come down to a decision you will make. The road is going to part, and you’re going to choose the direction.”

Something of Grantaire’s anxiety about that particular brilliant idea must register to Jehan, because they press a kiss to his forehead and stand up again. “Let me rephrase: you will make the right decision, whichever decision you make. And it will be enough,” they say. Voice lower, they add, “You are enough. You will be enough. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Grantaire says, corners of his mouth turning up. “Guess we have to hope so.”

“Once again,” they say, “plenty of reason to hope.”

Grantaire worked nonstop until he figured out the spell on Combeferre, so Enjolras and their friends didn’t have to dig too much into research. It was theoretically easy enough when you have access to the amount of power that Grantaire did – the difficult part was figuring out how that power was actually applied.

He considered not leaving a token to keep up appearances of subtlety, but it was second nature to him to pull a blue-black feather from his wings, and his panic of a few days ago had been forgotten since Enjolras hadn’t mentioned anything Heaven-related again. He contemplated the feather for a minute, then hid it under Combeferre’s pillow. With any luck, it’d be a while before he noticed, anyway.

Grantaire wondered when he became so reckless and couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

He was done with his work Downstairs for the time being, and he meant to go back to Heaven and be alone with his paints for a good long while, but it seems that wasn’t part of the Plan. When he stepped into the hall from Combeferre’s apartment, Feuilly was sitting on the floor, typing away on her laptop. They’d been taking turns keeping Combeferre company through the door, exchanging ideas and questions. None of them had mentioned that most of them would have their first day of college tomorrow.

“Did you fix him?” Feuilly asked, not glancing up from her computer screen.

Grantaire froze. She couldn’t be talking to him – she couldn’t see him. He moved slowly away.

Feuilly looked up, then, eyes fixing on a point somewhere in Grantaire’s chest. “I can’t quite see you, but I know you’re there. You’re the one who helped me before, with my wish,” she said, and then continued, quieter, “And now you’ve helped Combeferre. Thank you.”

Grantaire remained glued to the spot, the pinprick sparks of Feuilly’s magic looping around them.

Feuilly grimaced, teeth bright against her medium-brown skin. “Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to show yourself and I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “I figured there must be a reason you hide, but I know you’re there. Always been able to see more than most people. I only told Enjolras about you because he saw me find your feather and it’s hard to lie to him, you know? I’m sure you know, you’re an Angel, you guys are supposed to know most things. I think. Anyway, thanks for helping Combeferre. We would’ve figured it out eventually, but this makes things easier. If we meet again, I’d like you to teach me some more magic, since I’m not great at it yet, but I want to learn.” She gave the space where he was standing a sunny smile. “Besides, friendly neighborhood Angel or not, if you hurt any of us, I’ll find a way to punch you in the face even if it requires defying the laws of physics. Good night!”

She got up, stretched and pounded on the door. “’Ferre, open up! Let’s see how sick you make me, come on,” she shouted.

Grantaire snuck away, bewildered by the whole experience. He was tempted to tell Éponine, but she wouldn’t help. Fantine was too close to an authority figure for comfort, and Joly would just have a heart attack at his carelessness.

He took Feuilly at her word, and for seven years, her word held.

Fantine finds him a few hours after he’s done with his paperwork. He’s painting, just him and brushes and colors. Using his Gift would be cheating – he likes the act of it, the motion of his hand on the canvas, even if he had to Create the materials themselves out of the free-floating energy that all of Heaven is steeped in. He can’t very well go down to Earth and steal real paints, so he has to make do. Besides, he acknowledges that spending all his free time trailing after Enjolras like an invisible stalker would be neither inconspicuous nor productive.

“What is it today?” Fantine asks. Usually, she’ll ask questions to lead him – she doesn’t like issuing orders unless they become absolutely necessary, reserving her Gift for extreme circumstances and strict official business. He likes that about her, most of the time. Valjean is the same way, though his Bureau necessarily has more structure.

He shrugs. “Humans,” he replies. In truth, he’d been painting the lights on the Seine – he remembers a café at night from a long time ago, when he was new to being an Angel or perhaps a flash of when he was still a human, and candles on the tables like small stars caught and grounded. The colors of laughter around him, gold lining the memory’s edges and a bright crimson for something else – an impending catastrophe, or maybe a protected desire. He hasn’t decided which. He’s always had problems conflating the two.

She gives a small snort. “It always is,” she says. “I have an assignment for you.”

Grantaire turns to face her, frowning. “I only got back three days ago, and I only finished my paperwork today,” he says. “Another already? Don’t we have hour restrictions or something?”

“This is Heaven, we don’t have labor laws. And you don’t technically require rest, so no, although you could refuse if you wanted and I could pass it along to someone else. But I have a sneaking suspicion that you won’t,” she says.

He sets his brush down carefully, gold leaking into the cup of murky paint-water. “Oh?” he asks. He’d thought Jehan was just being Jehan when they’d warned him of something big coming soon, and meant that ‘soon’ would be anywhere from a year to a decade in the future. Prophets don’t always have the best grasp of time.

“There is a man in Paris who has been consorting with the Angel whose Protection he is under,” she says. Montparnasse, he thinks, blinking, found out so soon? What in God’s name has he been doing, to warrant attention like this? “To cast powerful spells on those he believes are in the moral wrong and happen to be members of the political opposition. Curses, but ones backed by an Angel’s Gift, made more powerful and more lethal. The man doesn’t mean to kill anyone. He wants them to understand his idea of justice, but the Angel has twisted it.”

Members of the political opposition – she can’t mean Enjolras. Any side is enormous in politics, with hundreds of moving parts; the chances are small. Nonetheless, he feels dread run down his spine, but he pushes it away. “You know you’re asking me to start another rebellion,” Grantaire says, flat. “Going in by myself to fight directly against another Angel in the name of lifting a curse? It’s a dangerous fucking play, Fantine.”

“When the opposition party starts dying, there will be chaos. Panic. More than there already has been, and people will ask harder questions,” she says. “This isn’t me asking you to start a rebellion, this is me asking you on behalf of Heaven to stop an Angel who has effectively gone rogue. In fact, this is because the Archangels don’t want another rebellion, so we cannot be overt in our efforts – he must not be allowed to rally others to his cause, because he will hurt people. Humans, Grantaire. Innocents.”

“He’s going to Fall,” Grantaire realizes, ice creeping through him. Hell had only seemed an attractive option when he had hit the worst of his grief; he knows what they do to Angels there, and he wouldn’t wish it even on the lowest of his kind.

Fantine nods. “This is how it must be,” she says. “The Prophets have said it.”

Must be what Jehan was working on. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he says. “It’s a lot of politics, both human and Angel, and I’m not exactly in the Archangels’ good books. Much as I know we both hate to remind me, I was on the losing side in the last Rebellion. Why am I the one you’re coming to with this?”

“The largest curse this man has cast is dependent on his own misunderstanding – he meant it to slowly turn moral decay into a change of heart, but magic is not a moral arbiter. It doesn’t work like that, but it still needs somewhere to go. The curse will drain the life from those it hits; this is the Angel’s contribution. The group that has been targeted by this is made up of upstart young humans who work for a French politician named Lamarque,” Fantine says. He’s heard that name before – the fear curls around him again, and he hopes desperately that his guess is wrong. “At their core and the one who will be most impacted by this curse, likely fatally, is a man named Enjolras.”

His face must go through a range of emotions, but Fantine remains perfectly serene. “I,” he begins, and then closes his mouth. Enjolras, weak, _human_ Enjolras, Enjolras who couldn’t be termed ‘frail’ in any incarnation but whose body now is only a body, not meant to take so much, cursed to a slow death because of some asshole Angel. Fucking Montparnasse.

He would rip the world apart for Enjolras if he had to, in any lifetime he’s given. He’d shatter the firmament and crack open the Earth for him, even for an Enjolras that doesn’t remember him at all, and Fantine damn well knows it.

“Such large magic will be difficult to counteract, especially if you are also working against someone as powerful as the other Angel – I cannot give you a name, but you will find it out,” Fantine says, not adding the ‘in case you haven’t already’ despite being able to see his thoughts on the matter. “It has been suggested by the Powers that Be that you use a very simple glamour to cover only your wings and go as a human otherwise. Blend in, figure out why this group was targeted and not just Lamarque – figure out what your opponent wants.” She pauses. The sun burnishes her hair into a glossier jet black, her wings fanning out huge and elegant behind her. “And a word to the wise: look not only at the surface of things, but also at their meanings. A gift may be a curse, and what seems a curse may be a gift.”

Mysterious as usual. His throat has gone dry. “What’s the catch?” he asks. Bureaucracy, there’s always a catch – they know he was associated with Enjolras during the Rebellion, however ineffective he may have been. God knows, if God is around and hasn’t fucked off like they’d suspected in 1989. The Archangels really care so much about reigning in Montparnasse? He’s having trouble accepting that.

Fantine’s mouth thins into an unhappy line. “If you get too close and don’t do what you must do in time, there is the risk that you will fail completely and the other Angel will destroy you.”

“Two birds with one stone, but that’s an ultimatum, not a choice – Jehan talked about a choice,” Grantaire mutters. “Where’s the fork in the road?”

Her voice is softer now. “Grantaire, you cannot fight well if you fear loss, and you cannot fight at all if the humans realize you’re not one of their kind and take your wings or kill you. There is the chance that you will have to choose what you think is the lesser of two tragedies. It’s up to you to decide what that is,” she says. “And whatever you choose, I will support you – even to the Archangels’ Court, if it becomes necessary.”

“Thank you,” Grantaire says, conscious of what he’s been given and equally conscious of Fantine omitting information.

Fantine smiles at him and pulls him into an embrace, her larger wings folding around him, soft and warm. “You have two months. Good luck,” she says, and it sounds like 'goodbye' and it sounds like 'you will be missed' – but it also sounds like 'go get him,' the feelings ringing through him from her contact, both a worry and a comfort.

He really will miss Fantine. She’s the only mother figure he remembers having – but he can’t regret leaving that much, if he can have just five minutes where he and Enjolras can actually see one another, wings or not. He’s not asking for a lot, but sometimes he thinks his own luck is even worse than that of Musichetta’s Protected, a hapless human named Bossuet.

Destiny hasn’t been great to him so far. He only wants to be on an equal floor with Enjolras for any amount of time – he’s been praying for it and hoping God’s around to hear for twenty-five years. Maybe God actually listened.

He pulls away. “Thank you,” he says, again. “For everything, and for the luck. It looks like I’ll need it. Goodbye.”

She nods at him, and pushes off the ground, wings spreading and carrying her. She doesn’t look back, but she’s never been one for too much sentimentality. Footsteps approach him, and Grantaire honestly should have suspected – Valjean has been waiting to speak his piece. “I’m not your Bureau Chief, but I’d also like to wish you luck,” he says. “And I have something you should take with you, with the wish that perhaps someday it will return to me.”

From the ground, he pulls out a sword whose handle is engraved with the golden curls of a lily and whose blade is forged with red-tinted Heavensteel. “This is–” Grantaire begins.

“It was the Red Guardian’s sword, and now it will be yours, if you want it,” Valjean says. “It will not replace your sword, but should you choose, you can fight with this.”

“How do you have this?” Grantaire murmurs.

“I’m the Chief of the Bureau of Protection,” Valjean says. “I’m the one who supervises the creation of Angel’s swords, and I can use any which have passed through my Bureau. I am giving this one to you, because it’s been yours for twenty-five years in all but name, though I hope events will not come to such violence that you need it.”

Grantaire feels humbled, the weight of another heavy responsibility settling onto his shoulders. “I’ll do my best,” he says. He can’t promise it’ll actually work, but he can promise that much.

“Your best is enough,” Valjean says, too serious, a ghost of Jehan. Grantaire smiles helplessly. He hopes it’s true. “Good luck, Grantaire. May God and peace go with you.”

“And with you,” Grantaire echoes. “Thank you.”

Valjean grins. “You’re welcome. Go and save your human, then,” he says, always less fearful of anyone hearing what he says than any other Angel Grantaire knows, indicating either remarkable faith or remarkable stupidity. “I believe in you. Goodbye.”

Grantaire sketches a lazy salute as the other Angel heaves himself off the ground, heading in the same direction as Fantine.

Time to get to work.

He’s due Downstairs the next day, so he distributes his paintings among his friends, in case he doesn’t return – he’s only ever done this once before, and Bahorel had tracked him down after and punched him in the face for scaring them all like that. In fairness, Grantaire thinks, that had been because of a case several magnitudes less complicated than this one but that had seemed huge at the time – his charge was stopping the destruction of a town full of innocents, near Athens. It had been the wish of only one man – one incredibly angry, incredibly powerful man.

He had a few other Angels working with him and he had the Angelic healing factor, but being blown to pieces wasn’t something even an Angel could typically recover from, so he made the necessary arrangements beforehand and thought it was a pretty reasonable thing to do. Powerful magic does not always choose its bearers wisely, and he’d been reminded too strongly of his own failings.

He doesn’t like to remember Athens.

This time, Joly and Musichetta each get two paintings of lightscapes, cities drowning in the sun which he’d made of brilliant yellows and oranges. Bahorel gets a darker set, some of the shit Grantaire had produced immediately after 1989, filled with hollowed-out silver and gritty rust. He doesn’t think he’ll mind. Jehan gets his biggest canvas, the one he’d done after the case with Feuilly, a sprawling study in momentary happiness done in all the blues and whites of Heaven, and Éponine gets all the rest – all the ones full of red and gold and motion, ceaseless energy ringing out of them – because she’s the last being who can judge him.

Before he can manage to sneak away, Joly catches up, physically flying into him and knocking the breath from his lungs.

He shoves his two paintings into Grantaire’s face. “Why this?” he asks. “Stop it. Stop trying to self-destruct. I refuse to be the only one left around here to deal with all this bullshit.”

Grantaire pushes the canvases aside gently. “I’m not trying to self-destruct. I’ve just been given a very dangerous case,” he says. “Super-secret. Maximum Heaven-fucked-up factor.”

“I don’t like it,” Joly says. “If you give us your paintings, you don’t think you’re going to survive it, so I don’t like it.”

“I’ll be fine,” Grantaire says. Maybe, he adds in his head.

Joly points a finger at him, unhappiness lining his face. “I don’t care how bad it is. You’d better come back,” he says. “I’m serious, R. Don’t make me hunt you down.”

“I’ll try,” Grantaire says, but he can tell it sounds false.

“You’d better,” Joly repeats. His face goes through several emotions before settling on resignation, and he reels Grantaire in for a hug. He’s got good friends, Grantaire thinks. Joly pushes away, but pins him down by the shoulders to make him listen. “If you need help, you know where to find me. Or call me. I got ‘Chetta to zap my phone with her weird protect-y magic so now it works everywhere, even though when I tried to Mend it into doing that, nothing happened. Musichetta’s better than me at everything, I guess.”

Grantaire nods. “Thanks,” he says. “And I have to go, before Bahorel comes after me again. Please tell him and Musichetta and Jehan and Éponine that I’m all right, if you get a chance – you all worry too much about me. Goodbye, Joly.”

“No, we worry exactly the right amount. But I’ll let them know. And bye,” Joly says. “You can do it.”

“We’ll see,” Grantaire says, and he’s diving down, down, down.

He’s kept track of Enjolras well enough that he knows where to find him and his friends on a Thursday night – most of them work for Député Lamarque, and they spend one night a week having futile meetings about strategies to prevent France’s downhill slide into incoherent right-wing rage. From what he understands, these meetings are separate from their work, but tacitly approved of by Lamarque herself, especially in light of the sudden jump in the popularity of the National Front.

It’s easy enough to Create a glamour for his wings and sidle his way into the side room of the bar where they all gather, wine in hand. He can’t get drunk, but blending never hurt anyone, and sometimes he misses the ghost of a feeling that comes with holding a bottle. Nobody really notices him – he’s made a powerful enough shield around himself that people instinctively look away. The first night is for reconnaissance, not for revealing himself as an interested party, he tells himself. They’ll all be safer this way, though he’d been given permission to play human.

He needs Enjolras to be safe.

Enjolras, evidently, doesn’t share that need. Halfway through the meeting he brings a hand to his head, says, “I’m sorry, but I feel a bit faint,” and slides down to the floor, eyes slipping shut as Grantaire starts to panic. He’s been talking for twenty minutes, looking fine, but Grantaire hadn’t been paying enough attention – this type of magic is always lurking under the surfaces of things. It isn’t just an aura hanging menacingly in the air, not something he could cut through with a flick of Creator’s Light if he wanted. It’s inside Enjolras, squeezing at him and hurting him enough that he’s slumped against the wall from the strain.

Grantaire is the first over to him, despite his friends sitting closer – no, no, no, _no,_ he thinks, the curse can’t be this strong yet, I haven’t had any time. He’s checking Enjolras’ pulse, rabbit-quick and hidden deep but still there, when he’s bowled over by something very small and very solid.

A young girl is sitting on his chest, pressing something sharp to his throat. His wings dig uncomfortably into his back, but he has a moment of gratefulness that he didn’t lose his concentration so much that he dropped the glamour. “That was too fast, stranger,” she hisses into his ear, curly hair floating in a halo around her head. “What are you?”

“Someone who wants to help,” he says, desperate, ready to plead with all of them in turn if that’s what it takes. He can’t lose Enjolras again. He can’t do it. “Please, let me help.”

She looks suspicious, but she must see the fear writ large on his features because she lets him up, dark-skinned fingers deftly hiding a slice of silver – the knife she’d held at his neck. He gains his bearings and staggers over to Enjolras. His wine bottle is forgotten on the floor somewhere behind him.

He thinks quickly – he can’t use too much of his Gift for fear that it’ll give him away as something other than an extraordinarily strong yet still human magic user, but he can spare some and mask it for this. Fantine had been right – the curse is laced around all the people in this room, but it clumps like a tumor inside Enjolras’ chest, pulling inwards and crushing him. He can’t yet get rid of the curse at its roots; he’s not powerful enough to do that subtly and not alone enough to avoid an almost immediate death by a vengeful Montparnasse if he tries, since the other Angel will feel his own magic, magic of Protection and power, being cut off. Grantaire does the next best thing he can do: he Creates a bubble.

He can’t Mend or Heal, but he can use some of his own Gift to siphon the slimy darkness out of Enjolras and into his little bubble of Light, trapping it there. It’s sticky and ugly magic and it won’t hold forever, but it will hold for enough time that he hopes he can finish his job.

The body under his hands is breathing easier, and he seals up the bubble and pockets it. Hopefully when it breaks, he’ll be far enough away from this place that the only one who will be adversely affected will be him. He closes his eyes and allows relief to wash over him for a moment, safe, I saved him, this time, he’s _safe_ turning around in his head. He’s tired in his bones – always forgets how exhausting it is to work so hurriedly.

That done, he looks up and notices that everyone in the room is staring at him, including a now somewhat-more-lucid Enjolras, who watches him with a bleary mixture of confusion and awe. Grantaire resists the urge to raise a hand to his own chest, where his affection clutches at him and digs its claws in, rendering him helpless at Enjolras’ attention. He hadn’t forgotten this, but it had been muddied in his memory, and the sharpness of the feeling takes him by surprise.

“Enjolras,” he breathes.

“Who are you,” Enjolras says, blinking his way closer to complete alertness and feeling gingerly at his throat, “and how do you know my name?”

Moments tick by as Grantaire decides which part to lie about first, carefully keeping his wings hidden. “My name is – R,” he says, finally, the moniker sounding strangely right among these people. Names are too powerful, and he’s got enough of his wits about him to not tell them ‘Grantaire.’ “I know what your name is because I’ve seen you around. I love Député Lamarque’s work.”

“But who are you?” says the man in glasses at Enjolras’ right hand, still looking at him curiously though the rest have relaxed by degrees with his words. Grantaire stifles his instinctive shock – it’s Combeferre, whose curse he’d spent so much time trying to Create a path out of.

“That was an impressive bit of magic,” says the man at his left. Courfeyrac, whispers some dusty corner of Grantaire’s mind. He knew him – one of Enjolras’ lieutenants even during the Rebellion, smudged over by time and the meddling of Archangels. Loyal to Enjolras in this life, too, obviously. Strange, how they seem to all have glued themselves together once more out of the broken pieces of glass that they’d been scattered into. “I’m pretty good, but I’m not nearly that good, and it takes a huge level of skill to do something like that and not accidentally hurt anyone – that shit you pulled out of him looked pretty nasty. We just want to know who we’re thanking for not letting Enjolras die.”

He’s not dying anytime soon, either, if I have anything to say about it, Grantaire thinks. “Just an interested party,” he eventually settles on. He could say, ‘Oh, I was in love with him in his past life which is also my current one, and by the way, since I have to make a token protest, Angels aren’t real’ – but no matter how strongly these people feel about magic users’ rights or the supernatural in general, he somehow doesn’t think that’ll be the most convincing argument.

“Well, Mr. Just-an-interested-party, thank you for saving our friend, even if you’re going to be mysterious about yourself,” Courfeyrac says. “Were you actually here for the meeting?”

“Yes, I was,” Grantaire lies, thankful for the excuse. He dredges up the political mutterings he’s heard Downstairs in the past months in his mind. “The EU elections brought a lot of unsavory people into power.”

“Too many,” Enjolras agrees, speaking to him without wariness now. Grantaire hides his grin behind his palm. He’s not a human child, hearing a voice shouldn’t fill him with so much warm elation. “Député Lamarque supports our efforts to prevent anything worse. The National Front’s targeting of minority groups is deeply troubling, regardless of what group they are – magic users are no more a plague on society than immigrants or gender minorities. All of us deserve equality.”

“Though some would argue that all of the above are, in fact, plagues on society,” Combeferre says, pushing his glasses up on his nose. His keen eyes are no longer on Grantaire.

The conversation filters back into the room, and Grantaire backs out and picks his way through chairs to an empty table, grabbing his wine bottle as he passes it. He is forgotten, his little glamour once again working to pushing people’s attention away even from their leader’s miraculous savior, but the girl who’d knocked him down before makes her way over and sits by him. She doesn’t look nearly old enough to be in a bar, let alone to drink, but she’s holding a glass of – something. Grantaire decides he doesn’t want to know. She’s not why he’s here.

“R, huh?” she asks, staring at him.

“Yup,” he replies. Why does nobody else in the bar think it’s odd that there’s a little girl poking around? Why can she see through his glamour?

She snorts at the confusion which must be showing on his face. “If you gotta know, I’m Courfeyrac’s distant cousin, and the name’s Gavroche. I didn’t know they were sending anyone down here on official business, but you should probably come up with a better cover than ‘an interested party,’ or you’ll be easy as fuck to pick out and kill seeing as you don’t belong,” she says, voice hushed but carrying to him perfectly. He squints at her, and the vague backlit outline of wings becomes apparent – another Angel? Her glamour must be incredibly powerful, to be difficult even for him to parse. Why didn’t Fantine tell him there would be another? “I know what you are, and now you know what I am. Sort of. If you’re here to help, you can stay. If not, I will make sure as shit that all your Bureau finds left of you is a pile of ashes, because this is important.”

Grantaire swallows, and nods, feeling like he’s being threatened by someone much older than Gavroche looks. “I really am here to help,” he offers. “There’s – something bad going on, some bad magic. You saw me pull it out of Enjolras.”

Gavroche’s eyes widen slightly with realization at the name, but she only smiles, guileless now and looking much younger because of it. “Gotcha,” she says, then winks at him. “You’re Third Bureau. Won’t tell nobody.”

“Thank you,” he says, meaning it. He needs all the help he can get, even if he doesn’t know why this strange young Angel is involved yet.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she replies. “Thank me if we all survive what’s coming.”

He shrugs. “That’s what I’m here to help with,” he says, and then, feeling bolder, “Do you know who wove this curse? Any name I can use?”

Gavroche scowls. “Names ain’t everything, despite what lots of Upstairs seems to think,” she says. “And I don’t know the name of whatever help he’s getting, but the guy who’s running a campaign to get Lamarque out of office is some fucknut with the National Front, Gillenormand. His employees are the best bet for any curse – he never liked people different than him, and Lamarque definitely falls into that particular category. She’s got magic folks of her own, but they ain’t fuckheads, so they don’t curse the other side, and if they have Angels, those Angels ain’t stupid enough to reveal themselves and amplify shit. And anyway, these ones are close to knowing about us as is, which I guess has something to do with the way you were looking at ‘Ferre like a mouse looks at a hawk and the way Feuilly keeps twitching and glancing over here.”

The last part short-circuits Grantaire’s thoughts for a moment. “Feuilly is here?” he asks. “Curly-haired magic user Feuilly? Are you fucking kidding?” he says. How long has Fantine been setting him up for this? How much help was she getting from Jehan? He thinks he’s earned the right to be a bit frustrated at all the pieces he’s missing.

“That’s the one,” Gavroche says. “She doesn’t look mad, if that’s what you’re worried about, but she can definitely see through your, uh, y’know,” she pauses, then waggles her fingers in a clear sign for ‘shitty-quality glamour.’

“Fuck,” Grantaire mumbles, looking for Feuilly in the poorly-lit morass of people in the café. She’s looking back at him when he sees her, at the back and across the room. He pulls a few more layers of glamour over his wings, but she just raises an eyebrow at him. She must have practiced seeing through magic for the truth of it since he last saw her.

“She’s on your side, don’t worry about her,” Gavroche says, taking a drink. “Well, she’s on Enjolras’ side, and it’s pretty damn clear you’re on his side if you’re on anyone’s. Calm down, loverboy, and take more care with how you spend your Gift so you don’t get killed by some trigger-happy anti-magic humans before you finish whatever fixing you’re gonna do.”

Grantaire takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out. Gavroche is on his side, then, on Enjolras’ side – she can be an ally. “You spend a lot of time Downstairs? You know an awful lot about human political bullshit,” he says, testing his luck.

It’s Gavroche’s turn to shrug, now. “Gotta keep busy somehow,” she says. “I’ve got a job, same as you, mine’s just taking a while and ain’t really accountable to nobody short of the Lord.”

Sounds like an assignment as undercover as his own, likely for Valjean’s Bureau. He wouldn’t put it past him to pull something like this, having Gavroche Protect someone who needed it, perhaps one of Enjolras’ friends, and not tell anyone in the Third Bureau. “I see,” he says. “I’ll start with Gillenormand’s people, then.”

Gavroche grins at him, wide and toothy. “Anyone tries to fuck with you, you fuck with them right back, Third Bureau,” she says. “And don’t fuck things up.”

“That’s the plan,” Grantaire says. “And I’ll try not to.”

“Time for me to be getting out, then,” Gavroche says. “G’night, Grantaire, and it was certainly interesting meeting you.”

Soon, Gavroche is gone, and Grantaire is alone at his table again. It takes him a few moments to register that Gavroche had used his real name – he was absolutely going to punch Valjean in the face if he ever saw the Angel again. There’s already been too many surprises on this case, and he bets at least half of them are Valjean’s fault; Fantine isn’t as good at hiding things. Luckily, he and Gavroche had been speaking quietly and both of their glamours had evidently been strong enough to ward off the curious of the Lamarque group – except Feuilly, who still gives him occasional looks. Grantaire’s back to watching and nursing his ineffective wine in silence. He wishes, not for the first time or even the hundredth, that alcohol actually worked on him.

People start leaving after a little while and the meeting is effectively dissolved. Grantaire will check on Enjolras later – he won’t follow him home when he’s already been noticed too much today – so he lets himself outside, pulling a cigarette out. Éponine might complain about the smell, but the motions are calming and it isn’t like his health can be adversely affected. Even if it could, things look increasingly like he won’t live that long. Montparnasse is stronger than him.

He lights it and takes a drag, making a mental note to get himself a lighter so he doesn’t reveal himself with something as silly as a flame of Light from the tip of his finger.

“Thought I would find you out here,” Feuilly’s voice says as she joins him in leaning against the café’s outer wall. He wishes he could say he’s surprised at the way her eyes slide around his wings, but at this point he’s just resigned and hoping nobody from Upstairs comes to smite him before he can finish this case.

“Did you? What’s your name?” he asks. There – he can say he tried to maintain the act, which is the most anyone could have expected.

Feuilly looks amused at the attempt. It’s pure Enjolras, surrounding himself by intelligent humans and powerful magic users and combinations of the two, surrounding himself with those who would protect him with all they’ve got. “Feuilly,” she says. “And you’re R, mysterious savior of our fearless leader who occasionally forgets that his body needs to sleep sometimes. You’re also something else, going by the blurry space around you.”

He smiles, aiming for sweet and innocent. It probably looks wrong on his face. “I’m just a magic user and a concerned citizen worried about the direction this country is taking,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “If you say so,” she says. She pulls out her own cigarette and lighter. “Didn’t know supernatural, uh, beings smoked.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he says, and takes a long drag. “I’m not a supernatural being.”

“Fine, don’t play,” she says. “But if I’m right about you, I meant what I said – fuck any of my friends up and I will find a way to fuck you up.” She hesitates, then pokes him in the shoulder. He must be losing his ability to strike divine terror into the hearts of mortals, he thinks drily. “And it looks like you’re corporeal, so it shouldn’t be that hard.”

“If I fuck any of your friends up, I’ll deserve it,” he says, taking a last breath of nicotine before stubbing out his cigarette on the wall and flicking it into a nearby garbage can.

Feuilly nods. “Then we agree,” she says. “Also, Enjolras has gone home for the night, if you’re wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” he lies. He’s done a lot of lying tonight. Maybe it’s just his fate to be surrounded by people who either read minds or are uncannily perceptive.

She rolls her eyes again, and then rummages around in her bag, eventually producing a very familiar feather. “I think this belongs to you,” she says. “It doesn’t look like you’re missing it much, but if you are, you can know that it’s safe with me and the other one is safe with Combeferre. You’re lucky Courfeyrac found it before Enjolras did, with the way those three live in each other’s pockets.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, but he’s glad they’ve been kept in good hands. For better or for worse, those are pieces of himself he’s given away because it felt kind.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll let you get back to – whatever it is you were doing. Brooding. And I’ll see you around, Mr. Mysterious R.”

“Thank you,” he says, and hopes she catches the layers. Thanks for keeping my feather safe, thanks for keeping Enjolras safe. Thanks for giving a shit, because Enjolras needs people who are stronger than I am and who give a shit about him. Grantaire spends a lot of time being thankful.

Feuilly holds out a fist to bump, and he does, feeling the brief sting of meeting magics – Angel and human magics don’t typically mesh well. Feuilly doesn’t flinch. She turns away, throwing a wave over her shoulder, and goes back into the café, yelling, “Bossuet, if I let you borrow my phone and you lost it or gave it to Marius, I _will_ punch you.”

Éponine’s Marius and Musichetta’s Bossuet. Of course they’re both here, too, part of Enjolras’ circle. Grantaire has to laugh a bit to himself, looking up at the stars that wink back at him from their spots guarding the bright circle of the moon. Fantine and Valjean must have been planning this for ages upon ages, and he’s willing to bet they’re planning yet more. Too many of these people seem like he’s known them before – it’s too much for coincidence.

He grins, because that’s the only thing to do. It’s time to check up on Enjolras.

Having made sure Enjolras is home and at least near his bed, he decides it’s time to do some more research; the curse that clings to all the members of the Lamarque group is at bay for the moment.

From some cursory Googling with a computer at the local library – often, he regrets the fact that Heaven hasn’t quite moved into the 21st century enough to embrace internet-capable devices because of the telepathy-induced lack of a perceived need – Gillenormand keeps his information notoriously private. His staff roster isn’t out to the general public, and nor are any of his sponsors. Evidently, Grantaire broke into a library in the middle of the night for nothing; he does feel a bit bad about it, since he’d always thought that libraries are one of those things that humanity did inexplicably right. He always gets vaguely guilty when he has to sneak into one, but he supposes the guilt is part and parcel of his whole Angel-of-the-Lord gig.

He resigns himself to spending some time sneaking around the actual office building. He’s undercover already, but he can’t chance Montparnasse visiting his Protected and finding Grantaire nonchalantly sitting there and watching, so he’ll have to be quieter about it. Since his late-night search was unsuccessful, he closes the door neatly behind him, Creating a tiny key out of his Light and locking up the library again.

The view from Enjolras’ balcony is becoming awfully recognizable, but he lights a new cigarette nonetheless and finds a comfortable position for his wings lying on the railing and looking up. It’s another clear night, and Enjolras is asleep for once at a normal time, so he’s got no real reason to be here beyond the comfort of knowing he’s safe.

He lets himself sink into imagining who he would paint first – Feuilly, with her quick smile and dark freckles on the bridge of her nose, or Courfeyrac, joyous streak as plain across his features in this life as it had been when he was an Angel. It’s become easier to remember him, likely a function of seeing him again and dusting the cobwebs from his memory.

Maybe one day, he’ll be able to tell him and Enjolras about their lives as Angels, about how they cared too much and it got them sent down to Earth. About how they’d wanted to give a hearty fuck-you to destiny and it backfired on them – because of course it did. Angels don’t have free will. About how Enjolras looks different, but the fire is the same.

Valjean had told him, during the Rebellion, that the world needed Enjolras’ spark, but he’s got no magic that Grantaire can see – no flickering threads dance around him. Is this all really part of the Plan?

Grantaire snorts to himself and shakes his head to clear it. His cigarette has burnt down to the filter, so he spins a tiny flame out of Light in his palm and lets it turn the butt into ash. If there is a Plan, nobody’s bothered to tell him about it. He’s not Jehan, not in the First Bureau. His speculation doesn’t mean shit.

When the first rays of the sun break across the Parisian rooftops, he sighs and throws one look over his shoulder at Enjolras’ sleeping figure before heading to the offices of one Monsieur Gillenormand. He’s got investigating to do, and Enjolras’ face was so peaceful this morning that he doesn’t feel particularly bad for giving in to his obsession and playing the guard dog for another night. It’s not like anything will ever come of it. When they were both Angels, Enjolras only barely saw him, and now he’s under contractual obligation by the laws of Heaven to at least mostly hide himself.

The only harm he’s doing is to his own foolish heart.

People start filtering into the office when the nearby chapel rings out 6AM, and Grantaire builds his glamour thicker from his front-row seat on the rooftop of a nearby building. None of the people walking in look more malevolent than the average human, but perhaps it only takes a small degree.

He’s lucky that the slow pace of Heaven has taught him some amount of patience, because it’s after lunch when the golden moment arrives – one of the people, walking briskly despite the muggy summer air, drops a notebook on the street. He’d had a haze of magic around him, blurring Grantaire’s vision with sheer power.

Grantaire jumps down and scoops it up – he’ll read through it and put it back on the ground before it’s missed – and returns to the roof.

The notebook is worn around the edges and has a neat scrawl covering the first two pages in what seems to be instructions, and the next few with names. Here, Grantaire thinks, he’s found the jackpot.

If he was a human reporter, the political consequences of this would be massive, but he isn’t. The list is neat and has the full names of thirty people, including the core and periphery of Enjolras’ group of aspiring activists. Names are powerful.

He blinks, the beginning of how to unravel the spell clicking into place. Name magic is strong, but now that he has all the names and can guess at the mechanism, he can Create a strong counter to it as well, hopefully. The problems will come when Montparnasse realizes his powers are being completely defanged, but Grantaire knows he can’t wait long; he needs to find a way to do this as subtly as possible, or at least create enough of a diversion that he can take the fighting away from Paris and all its innocents. The curse is already too strong around Enjolras for his comfort.

He flips through the rest of the notebook – no signature, but he’ll recognize the man who dropped it if he sees him again, what with how strong his magic was. The remainder of the pages are blank.

He copies down the list so that he’ll know who to invoke when he puts his shield into action. A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Joly tells him that one Angel is strong, but not nearly strong enough to make a protective shell around thirty humans and battle another Angel at once. Maybe if he asked Éponine for aid, her Gift of Protection would help, but then she’d be at risk as well. It’s huge magic – it’ll be dangerous to cast no matter how many friends he’s willing to sacrifice, and that number stands at zero. He’s the one who was given this case, so he’s the one that has to finish it.

Resolved, he makes sure the layers of glamour haven’t faded and drops the notebook back on the street, returning to his perch.

The man from before rushes out in a few minutes, missing the notebook already, and exhales loudly as he picks it up, likely grateful it hadn’t been stolen. Grantaire swallows a cough; not stolen, but still misappropriated.

“Monsieur Javert!” calls a voice from in the building, and someone whose form is far too hazy for him to not be getting any supernatural appearance alterations emerges. He’s quickly followed by a woman who blurs the same way. Grantaire rubs his eyes – they almost hurt to look at, and it’s different than the first man’s clean lines. These two make him want to shudder, and he feels cold despite the sun at his back. Their magic is oily-slick.

“M. Javert,” the woman says. “Come back inside, won’t you? M. Gillenormand wants a word with you, he does.”

He finally has a name to go on – Javert – and he’s certain this man has never featured in his memories, or at least those of his life as an Angel. The other two, however – they are too familiar. It’s possible that they’re just very powerful magic users, but he doesn’t think it’s likely. He’ll have to account for more than Montparnasse and one pet human, then, even if he’s hesitant to think of them as servants of Hell since that isn’t a guess he can make lightly.

“Yes, Monsieur and Madame Thenardier,” Javert replies. To Grantaire’s sharp vision, he looks discomfited by their presence, as any human probably should be. “I must have dropped my notes on my way in, but I’m returning now.”

Monsieur Thenardier smiles, sickly-sweet. “Wouldn’t want you to lose those,” he says.

“Some unpleasant characters might get a hold of them,” Madame Thenardier agrees.

As they shepherd Javert back into the office building, Madame Thenardier turns back and looks straight at where Grantaire is. The skin crawls on the back of his neck and he reminds himself that there’s no way she can see him. He’s under even more glamour than usual – another Angel would have a hard time seeing him, let alone a demon or whatever she is. “Problems, problems,” she mutters, and turns away, heading back inside.

Grantaire gives in to the urge and shivers.

He doesn’t like the sound of that.

Monday morning sees him again on his preferred rooftop, watching for Javert. The Thenardiers haven’t made a reappearance since they left for the day on Friday, but he’s been keeping his distance for the weekend. He already has his names, and that’s most of what he needs – now it’s down to sorting out how exactly he’ll solve this with minimal damage to everyone else.

The weekend has been spent resisting the desire to check on Enjolras more than twice a day – the man has, in fact, survived mostly without Grantaire’s help for 25 years of life as a mortal – and digging through books.

Books, Grantaire thinks, are a supremely underutilized resource now that the internet is around. While computers are vastly helpful, there are reams of knowledge contained in paper volumes which have not been digitized. If he’s going to fix anything, he needs to take advantage of that. In his long life as an Angel, he’s never taken on something this big on his own – he’d gotten Heavenly help for the case outside of Athens and still near-failed, and this is far beyond that. Maybe this is finally his divine retribution for all the rules he’s broken and all the Archangelic decisions he’s maligned.

Thus, he turns to books. Of course, not books that ordinary humans would have access to, but the books full of magical history mingled with Angelic lore, and hopefully the books full of details and instructions on Angelic magic. The books that are in the library under the city of Paris.

The catacombs are full of French bones, but they are also convenient in that they have not been fully mapped. Musichetta keeps her book collection down here, where neither of them need much light to see and where nobody really comes except Angels who are looking for information, who they know and trust with the location. Sometimes, one of them finds a lost human without a light and leads them back to the surface.

When Musichetta first started her little library, before the humans’ Second World War, more often they found people who were dying – who had decided to explore, then gotten lost and doomed themselves. She’d convinced Grantaire to Create a path that would only be seen if it was needed, to show people the nearest exit and lead them to safety. He did, though it was a lot of magic to spend on something that wasn’t case-related.

Not everything they did was on the orders of the Divine. Now, people don’t get lost that much anymore.

He remembers being surprised, that night, when he’d come back Upstairs, tired as anything, and Enjolras had looked at him like he was worth seeing. All he’d done was a favor for a friend, and it got him a smile like that. It’s one of the good memories, however cheaply-won it felt at the time.

He finds his way down to the library irregularly, and she’s not here that often, either; she’s got a human to Protect and other things to do. She’d told him after the Rebellion that if he ever needed a place so quiet that only the ghosts would hear him, it was there for him to hide in. He thinks she got Joly and Jehan to help her out with building the shelves in such a way as to not disturb the dead, Jehan with his Prophet’s eyes to make sure the spirits slept well and Joly with his Gift to Mend anything broken. Grantaire, for his part, thinks there’s nothing to fear for him down here besides the gone and the forgotten, and he knows both of those too well to be particularly afraid.

In any case, the books housed deep in the catacombs are Musichetta’s collection of assorted writings both by Angels and by those who have interacted with them. He’s hoping one of them will be useful in trying to peel apart Angel and human magic without any explosions, though this weekend hasn’t yet yielded anything. He’s going to do his damnedest to prevent anyone dying.

Now, that involves keeping track of Javert.

While the man stays inside for most of the morning, he leaves around noon and Grantaire follows him at a distance, coasting along rooftops until he gets to a friendly-seeming café near where Javert has halted. By his bearing, Javert has had some combat training, and Grantaire isn’t too keen on being recognized as a tracker or trying to put some tracking magic on him. Real spying isn’t exactly his forte.

Javert waits at a bus stop, but he misses three buses that go by. A meeting place, Grantaire thinks, peering over the top of a newspaper filched from one of the stands nearby. He’ll give it back when he’s done watching from his little table.

Eventually, someone with the outline of wings that he doesn’t recognize arrives – they’ve used a pretty strong glamour, but it takes some exceptional magic to fool Angel’s eyes. The silhouette of wings looks – wrong, though, spindly and odd.

Javert, for his part, barely reacts. “When will the spell kick in, Claquesous? Monsieur Gillenormand really cannot afford this group of reckless schoolboys making more trouble for him, and the sooner they see the light, the better. That upstart, Lamarque, is grating on our nerves,” he says quietly, and Grantaire hears every word. He sends up a thanks for Angelic enhanced senses.

“There’s been a complication,” Claquesous says, smooth as butter, and Grantaire feels a shiver run down his back. Definitely not an Angel of any variety, even the variety of Montparnasse – it’s the same slime that the Thenardiers seemed doused in.

Javert nearly growls. “Montparnasse promised there would be no complications,” he says. “He’s an Angel, how in the world can he be wrong? Angels are servants of the Lord.”

Grantaire almost pities him, he really does. Those who live in worlds painstakingly carved into pure dichotomies are missing some fundamental truths.

Claquesous shrugs. It’s a smarmy sort of gesture. “Humans always add a factor of unpredictability to things. And,” he adds, “when I said ‘complication,’ I meant of the supernatural variety. Lots of magic users in that group, and many of them are pretty powerful. If they all worked together they could probably hold back the spell.”

Grantaire knows that’s bullshit – Claquesous knows that’s bullshit, whoever sent him and whatever he is. Javert, obviously, does not, because after his small mutinous complaint he just says, “Montparnasse gave me his word. The Lord is not mocked, and the law is not mocked. Tell Montparnasse I want to meet with him directly. No more of this passing of messages – I need a true conversation.”

“I’ll let him know, but I can’t guarantee he’ll say yes,” Claquesous says. “Either way, the spell should take full effect in a few days, unless there are more, ah, problems with implementation.”

“This is not a complex system,” Javert says. “It’s a simple curse. See that it is done – Gillenormand has enough on his plate, and Lamarque needs to be thrown down from her high horse regardless. The sooner her office understands that they all have certain places in life and their demands are ridiculous and impractical for our system, the better.”

Claquesous nods. “Of course,” he says, inclines his head and melts away. Grantaire smells sulfur in the air, but – he still doesn’t want to believe it. Javert’s not such a fool as to miss something like that.

Javert is still frowning when he returns to his office building, and Grantaire to his rooftop. He’s got quite a bit to think about.

Two days go by, but Javert doesn’t have any more clandestine meetings. By Wednesday afternoon, Grantaire is, admittedly, getting bored. The books he’s taken from Musichetta’s library to pass the time have still offered him nothing so far, mostly rhapsodizing about the immense power to be had with the unholy and unsafe unification of Angel and human magic.

He sighs, and then notices that someone is watching him. He lacks the high-level telepathy of the Prophets and the Bureau Chiefs, but he does have a low hum of awareness.

Carefully, he puts the book down, and takes out a paintbrush. Well, not a paintbrush – _the_ paintbrush, one he can use to channel his power inconspicuously if he needs to. While he doesn’t need it, he also doesn’t particularly want to start up a huge lightshow atop a building in a well-trafficked part of town, and when he’s using his hands that’s hard to avoid.

“Cautious, ain’tcha?” a voice says from behind him, and he turns around slowly. Madame Thenardier has stepped out from the rooftop door. He’s on high alert – where’s her husband? “I suppose you’d have to be, to live so long as an Angel, if you’re near as old as Montparnasse, which you probably are. You look tired, featherbrain.”

“I think this roof has restricted access,” he says, forcing a smile. “I’m not sure you’re allowed to be up here.”

She cackles, a long and ugly sound. “Then neither are you, Angel,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “What are you snooping around for, then?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Grantaire says, still cheerful, taking tiny steps to the rooftop’s edge.

“Don’t play with me,” she hisses, stalking closer. She’s powerful, but he’s more than a match, and he has Angelic healing, he tells himself. If she is of Hell, then he was made with the power to defeat her. She’ll become more of a force to be reckoned with when her husband comes out of wherever he’s hiding in the woodwork. “I know what you are.”

“Do you?” he asks, deciding that it can’t hurt to play some of his own cards, and allows some of his power to leak through – bright enough to show but not enough to blind. Not as he could. A few layers of glamour peel off of his wings, and he unfurls them so that they cast a long shadow.

She grins, triumphant, and he’s stupid, stupid, he’s done something wrong. “I do,” she says, and her husband chooses that moment to appear and yell something that makes Grantaire feel as if his skin is burning.

He snarls and throws up a shield of Light, paintbrush falling from his fingers – so much for avoiding a show – but it doesn’t help. He feels like he’s crawling out of his body. Absolutely fucking not, he thinks, he hasn’t lived two damn centuries as an Angel to be thwarted by a couple of two-bit con artist demons, and he releases a burst of Light that briefly dissipates the burning feeling.

They’ve gotten closer while he’s been distracted, and they concentrate spells at one point in his shield – if they weren’t trying to kill him, he’d congratulate them on what a good team they make. He has his sword, but it’s too much of a gamble to draw that in such a populated place. Angel’s swords tend to be painful to look at for humans.

He concentrates and Creates a net around them, but he can already tell it’s too weak to hold them for very long. Whatever they did to him has sapped his strength. He weaves the net anyway; it will at least buy him time to make an undignified but hasty escape.

Then there’s a yelp and a curse and the spells stop coming. He lowers the shield and slumps over, chest heaving. His whole body hurts – what the hell did they do?

A winged shadow falls over him, and he holds up a finger. “I need a minute,” he says.

“I’ll bet you do, you utter piece of shit,” Éponine’s voice says. “If you weren’t injured, I’d kick you myself for doing that to me. Again.”

“It’s a mission, you know it’s a mission, why is everyone yelling at me? I was just trying to say goodbye, just in case,” he says. Angels on a case don’t work with backup unless assigned – it creates too many avenues for conflicts of interest, and they’re supposed to be powerful enough to handle things themselves, even minor demons. His friends are too invested in his wellbeing.

Éponine drops down next to him, her wings folding around them. “I know,” she says, voice softer now. The Thenardiers are more or less out cold, pinned by Éponine’s small daggers of Light; even for an Angel from the Second Bureau, she’s always been good in a fight. Good at finding weak points. “But don’t you get it, you huge dumbass? You don’t need to say goodbye. We’re your backup, R. We won’t give you the opportunity.”

There’s no point in arguing when he’s in such bad shape, so Grantaire smiles at her, wincing immediately from the motion. “Can’t get rid of you that easily,” he says. “Thanks.”

She helps him up as his smile becomes a pained grimace. “Joly’s waiting back at Musichetta’s library, probably pacing a hole in the ground through all the bones,” she says. “Let’s get you looked at before that happens, hm? And before the demons wake up.”

“Delicate as ever, ‘Ponine,” he says.

“I try,” she says. “Are your wings up to flying down?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, trying to lift one and cringing. They aren’t broken, but they feel like they’ve been weighted down with lead, and all his adrenaline is gone.

“We’ll take the stairs, then,” she says, casting her own glamour over them both. It won’t be as much of a mask as Grantaire’s – hers is not to conceal, but to fight and Protect – but it’ll get them to where they need to be.

When they make it down to Musichetta’s library in the catacombs – there’s a tourist entrance, of course, but they aren’t looking for that sort of thing – Joly is tossing something that looks like a human femur up and catching it again, muttering worriedly. Not too many stray bones have made it so far into the tunnels since the walls have been packed too well and disrupted too infrequently, but he’s managed to find an intact one. Grantaire makes a face. Musichetta’s reading and clearly tuning out the sound of Joly’s anxious mutterings.

Joly sees them first and carefully puts the bone down, scowling. “I told you to call me for backup,” he says. “This is the actual reason you have a human cellphone enhanced with magic, you know. It’s not in reality intended for playing stupid outdated phone games, it’s because we’re not all fucking psychic.”

“And what was I supposed to say? ‘Dear Joly, I’m being attacked by two magic-users-or-possibly-demons who know way more about me than they should and have some terrifying coupled spellwork?’ You would have worried too much,” Grantaire says. “I could’ve handled it.”

“Because you were handling it so well before I stumbled across you,” Éponine says, glaring at him.

She’s right. He sighs. “Get on with it, then,” he says.

“Angels,” Joly says. “Honestly, worst patients in the universe. Give someone an advanced healing factor and they think they’re immune to everything.”

“We are immune to everything,” Musichetta points out, setting down her book. Grantaire will write her an ode for not chastising him about his short-notice departure. “Almost.”

“The ‘almost’ is what I worry about, ‘Chetta,” Joly says, poking Grantaire in the ribs in a thoroughly unscientific way. “What hurts?”

“I’m fine,” Grantaire insists, instead of giving the true answer of ‘everything.’ Besides, he really does feel better than he did an hour ago. If he thinks it hard enough, it’ll be true. “Whatever they did made me temporarily weak, but now I think I’m fine. At least, there’s much less pain.”

“Much less isn’t none,” Joly says.

“I just need to rest my wings for a while, and I’ll be good as new,” Grantaire says.

Éponine raises an eyebrow. “Can you use your Gift?” she asks.

He frowns. “I think I should be able to,” he says. He reaches for it – there doesn’t seem to be anything blocking him, and the pain really has sunk down to a still-awful-but-slightly-more-manageable level. Or maybe he’s just gotten used to it.

“Try,” Musichetta says. “Give us a magic trick, R.” He takes back the ode. None of them are getting shit from him.

“If you can’t,” Éponine says, sugary-sweet, “we reserve the right to help you, because you’re the only one of us directly on a case right now, and we don’t want you to get staked. We’re your fucking friends, and that’s what friends do.”

Grantaire breathes in, holds it, and then exhales, sitting down against the wall and ignoring the twinge in his ribs. He draws on his Gift, trying for something simple – the first and easiest butterfly trick he learned, shaping it out of Light in his hands and letting it fly out of his cupped palms into the air. It illuminates the walls of the room they’re in, but it’s burning too brightly. When it reaches the center of the room, it hovers still and silent, and then – flies apart in a burst of sparks. He flinches. He hadn’t meant it to do that.

Joly blinks a few times, shaking off the afterimage. “Unstable,” he says. “They found a way to destabilize your Gift. Fuck, R, what the fuck is that? ‘Chetta, what’ve we got, do you know?”

Musichetta hums thoughtfully. “I thought it might be something like that when Éponine texted me about the weakness. It should fade in a little while on its own – healing factors are neat like that – but I’m not sure if there’s anything to do about it in the meantime.”

Grantaire drags a hand through his hair. “I need to finish this case,” he says. “Every day I make no progress is a day the spell I’m working against gets closer to pushing through the bubble I made. I need to be at full strength.” One fucking misstep – playing his hand too early, he’s so fucking stupid – and Enjolras is in more danger than he was this morning. Fucking shit.

Joly and Musichetta exchange a glance, but Éponine doesn’t look away from him. She puts a hand on his shoulder. “R, I don’t think you get it,” she says. “We’re helping you and your group of absurd humans. This is non-negotiable.”

“You and Musichetta both have a Protected to worry about,” Grantaire says. “And one Angel is already conspicuous enough. Four of us and we’ll all get burned for being the next great evil magic user cult. It’s a risky business already with just me, and whoever the key players are, they obviously already know about me. I’m not endangering the rest of you, too.” He shakes his head, and wrinkles his nose from the pain of the abrupt movement. Still weak, and now defective too.

Éponine and Joly turn to one another and confer in a series of eyebrow raises. “That’s why I’m the only one that will actually go to your meetings with you,” Éponine says. “Marius and Bossuet are both part of Enjolras’ group, and you need one of us to help you glamour your wings if your magic has developed explosive tendencies. Musichetta and Joly will play peacemaker with Upstairs if they send Fantine or Valjean after us for drawing too much attention to ourselves.”

Displeasure hums in Grantaire’s chest. It’s too big of a chance – even alone, he’d been making himself as invisible as possible, and two of Montparnasse’s cronies still found him. “I don’t like it. And if the Archangels come? What then? I’m no Prophet, but I’m damn near certain that this is a disruption of the Plan. It’s my assignment, not yours. ‘Ponine, you can’t reveal yourself for my shit judgment.”

“I won’t reveal myself, I’ll just be your backup,” she says. “Trust us, R.”

“If the Archangels come, so be it,” Musichetta says. “They won’t do anything. We’re right about this, and they won’t want another uprising on their hands.”

“Because the last one was such a failure for them,” Grantaire says, voice tightly controlled. “It wasn’t their best blood that got spilled, it was ours. This isn’t a good plan.”

“It’s the best plan we’ve got, at least until you’re back in commission with your full strength,” Joly says, brooking no argument, ever the healer with the soft heart but the steely disposition. Sometimes Grantaire forgets. “Take it or leave it.”

He grits his teeth and forces his regret-fear-frustration down. “Éponine only on the ground with me,” he says, relenting. “Minimal interference. I’m the one who needs to finish this, it’s my responsibility. You all can’t get hurt because of it.”

“We’ve all been around the block as much as you,” Musichetta says. “We’ll be fine. In any case, Joly and I are heading Upstairs for our check-ins. ‘Ponine, make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish.”

Joly ruffles Grantaire’s hair, smiling now even as Grantaire tries and fails to muster up a smile in return. “See you kids later,” he says, and they both head off.

Grantaire lets his head fall back against the wall with a thunk, sending up a prayer for forgiveness from the nearby dead whose bones he’s leaning on. Éponine is quiet beside him, and he tries not to be angry at his friends for backing him into this corner. He can’t let them get hurt because of him, so it’s one more distraction to add to the extensive list. ‘You cannot fight well if you fear loss,’ Fantine had said, and he fears it more than anything, because that’s what love does. He loves too much – has too much to lose.

“Things will be okay, R,” Éponine says finally, breaking the fragile stillness.

He looks at her sideways. “Montparnasse is who I’m fighting, here, you know that as well as I do. Do you really want to get mixed up? Don’t tell me it’s for your Protected, come on,” he says.

“I would die for Marius,” Éponine says. “You know that. But I would die for you, too. Love is scary as shit because it’s so huge, but it’s also a stronger reason to fight.”

Love is terrifying, Grantaire thinks, because then the loss of what you love breaks you. Fear is a paralytic, and he can’t afford to be paralyzed. “This Marius guy had better be fucking worth it,” he settles on.

“I never thought Enjolras was,” Éponine says, eyes serious in the dim light from the candles someone – probably Joly – had placed on an empty bookshelf. “You always deserved better than someone who put his causes before you. You deserve someone who loves you completely, the way you love them, in your own terrifying, larger-than-usual way. But we’re friends, so we respect one another enough to tolerate our feelings. That’s how it works. And, incidentally, Marius is worth it.”

Grantaire wants a cigarette badly, but he also doesn’t want to accidentally set a fire under the city with his trembling hands. “Fine,” he says.

“Shake on it,” Éponine says. “We’re friends and we help each other. Yeah?”

That part, he can shake on, and so he nods and does. “Yeah.”

He makes Éponine check on Enjolras while he’s still too drained to move, and she reports that everything is fine. Grantaire’s bubble holds, so whatever he’s Created in the past is obviously unaffected by the Thenardiers’ spell – he didn’t think it would be, but magic can be strange.

He nicks a couple of new books from Musichetta’s library, hoping he won’t have to go through the entire collection to find good information even though he’s already skimmed a significant chunk. He feels useless otherwise, so he has to busy himself, but he’s up for walking by the time Thursday evening rolls around and it’s time for the meeting. His wings still ache, so he keeps them close to his back and hopes his now-weak glamour can cover all of him.

Éponine meets him at the entrance to the Musain and adds her strength to his glamour without asking. It won’t be as effective as he would be on his own at full strength, especially where Feuilly and Gavroche are concerned, but it’ll have to do, since he’s unstable.

When they walk in, most eyes blissfully don’t turn to them, but Gavroche sits next to them immediately when they stake out an empty table. She whistles, ignoring the chatter around them – Enjolras isn’t speaking out yet, head bent over what’s probably plans with Combeferre and Courfeyrac.

“What the fuck happened to _you_?” Gavroche asks, staring at Grantaire. “Also, hiya, Ep. You’re friends with this dumbass?”

“Unfortunately,” Éponine says.

“You two know each other? What the fuck, Éponine? How the fuck,” Grantaire says.

They exchange a glance, and Grantaire thinks he’s going cross-eyed – they look related, he realizes dimly, air rushing in his ears. Were they related? Éponine never told him about Gavroche, he would have remembered, and she tells him everything. Almost everything, apparently. “Angels, you know,” Éponine says, forcing a grin. “We all know someone who knows someone.”

Gavroche rolls her eyes at the misdirect. “We were sisters, once,” she says. “When we were human.”

Éponine belatedly claps a hand over Gavroche’s mouth. Gavroche concentrates and she withdraws it, making a face and wiping her hand on Gavroche’s shirt, and Gavroche grins in triumph. “Shut up, we’re all as damn deep undercover as it fucking gets,” Éponine says. “Even from the Archangels, yeah? Don’t say shit like that out loud.”

“I feel a bit out of the loop,” Grantaire says, voice low. Enjolras has begun to pontificate, and Grantaire can’t stop his eyes from tracking the sweeps of his gestures. The bubble is burning a hole in his pocket, but he’d still rather he was the one carrying it around and keeping it from hurting anyone else.

“R should know,” Gavroche says. “It’s his fight, too, even if we’re all suckers for it and all he does is get beat up.”

“In fairness, they were powerful fucking magic users – I don’t want to think Montparnasse is hanging around with demons, but I think they were. I had to sneak up on them,” Éponine says. “They were – familiar.”

“Right, well, anyway,” Gavroche says. “After your dumb ass got kicked to Earth in the ’89 Rebellion, and most of these idiots got their wings clipped, me and ‘Ponine here started remembering each other from when we were mortal and we got to talking. That’s about it.”

“We were sisters,” Éponine says, quiet. “Angels aren’t supposed to have families, you know? Duty above all else. _Nisi Dominus frustra_. If we aren’t servants of the Lord, why do we exist? But – then there’s me and Gav. Family’s family.”

“Even when it’s been two centuries,” Grantaire says, raising his eyebrows.

“Even then,” Gavroche confirms. “Besides, we help each other. Who d’you think told this one about Montparnasse stumbling around down here all shifty like some demon trying to slip through the pearly gates? Me. It was me.”

“Why?” Grantaire asks.

Gavroche waves a hand. “Not important,” she says. “Seriously, though, what happened? I’m covering you now since ‘Ponine can’t shield for shit, but I’m tired and it’s only Thursday. Can’t hold up a glamour over you forever.”

Grantaire frowns – Gavroche is keeping secrets. “We said already, a couple of powerful magic users,” he says. “I don’t know how they saw me, but they did. Double-teamed me and I got to be rescued by your lovely kind-of-sister.”

Small fingers twirl a familiar penknife out of a sleeve, rolling it over knuckles. “Wouldn’t be the Thenardiers, would it? Didja catch a name?” Gavroche asks, watching the knife flash.

“That might be the name,” Grantaire says, hedging.

“Now that you mention it, it was them,” Éponine says, blunt. “As usual, at their best while trying to take from someone better than them. That’s what I remember, at least.”

“Well, that’s downright interesting,” Gavroche says. “Also, I’m going to slowly wear off my own glamour now, so be prepared for at least Feuilly trying to question you, R. I can’t divert everyone’s attention and think about this at the same time, I’m going to drop everything but hiding your wings.”

Grantaire nods. Nothing for it – he’s not at full strength anyway, and Montparnasse and the Thenardiers must know that already even if they don’t have an informant in the room.

Gavroche must drop it relatively fast, though, because soon Feuilly sees him in the corner and her eyes widen. The meeting has turned to small discussions once more, and she picks her way over to their table. “What happened?” she asks. Grantaire suspects he’s going to be very tired of that question by the end of the night, since even though he’s only a little bruised, his body has prioritized trying to heal his magic so the bruises are taking longer to fade and he looks like he was hit by a train.

“Nothing, really,” he says. “Just a bar fight, you know how it is. My friend and I got into a little scrape yesterday and I’m still recovering.”

Éponine throws him a dirty look for drawing attention to her, but Feuilly looks intrigued. “Another? You’re very beautiful,” she says to Éponine, who blushes. “I mean, your face is beautiful, but your wings as well.”

Éponine bristles now, trying to draw her glamour tighter. “What the fuck, R? How many of them know? How do they know?” she demands.

“Only Feuilly if we’re not counting Gavroche, because evidently we aren’t,” Grantaire says. “I did Feuilly’s case, once. She remembered me.”

“Sloppy,” Gavroche says from where she’s staring into the middle distance. Maybe that’s how she concentrates best, Grantaire thinks.

“Difficult to hide from someone with the potential to be the one of the most powerful magic users I’ve ever met, especially when she’s bent on remembering,” Grantaire replies.

“Still sloppy,” Gavroche says.

“Maybe,” Grantaire acknowledges.

“I’m right here,” Feuilly says, head swiveling away from where she’d been watching Éponine, who was continuing to glare defiantly and trying in vain to thicken her glamour. “And how many of you are there? Usually I only see one at a time, wings making everything blurry and all. You’re not blurry at all right now, R, what happened? I mean, your back is blurry, but I can tell that’s not – you doing that, is it?”

Grantaire wishes sorely for a cigarette, but Éponine had patently refused to walk within ten meters of him if he was smoking because of the smell. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’ll be better in a couple days anyway, I’m just low on power right now.”

Feuilly frowns. “That’s not good,” she says. Her eyes dart and focus beyond Grantaire, and she curses quietly. “Also, Enjolras is coming. Chances are he’s noticed the fact that you look like death warmed over.”

Grantaire slides lower in his seat and whines pitifully. Éponine pats him on the shoulder and Gavroche disappeared somewhere in the past few moments, so he shores up whatever glamour he has left – he’s obviously not getting out of this.

“You’re the one that helped me, last week,” Enjolras says, form casting a shadow over Grantaire’s table. “What happened to you?”

Grantaire looks up at him, trying to grin. Enjolras is hard to look at, standing against the overhead light – it gives him a halo, and Grantaire feels like if he started laughing now he wouldn’t stop until he got to tears. “Nothing. Got into a bit of a fight, but I’m fine,” he says.

Enjolras continues to frown and sits in the chair recently vacated by Gavroche. Grantaire sends a desperate glance to Éponine, but she just watches him with amusement glinting in her eyes. “You should take better care of yourself,” Enjolras says. “You’re welcome at our meetings, of course, everyone who believes in the ideas we talk about is, or everyone looking for a safe discussion space. But please, I wouldn’t want you to come if it means you’re not getting the rest you need.”

“Take your own advice,” Grantaire says before he can quite stop himself. He hasn’t once seen Enjolras sleep well through a whole night, but saying that would definitely get him banned from the meetings and possibly also handed a restraining order. “I mean, you’re the leader, you probably don’t sleep that much, even though you’d function better if you did.”

“I sleep enough,” Enjolras replies, and it’s hard-edged, now. So easily irritated – maybe Grantaire has been lied to, and his Gift was actually the ability to be a thorn in Enjolras’ side in every life.

“Do you?” Grantaire asks. Can’t resist.

“I don’t see how it’s any business of yours even if you did save me, R,” Enjolras says. “The only time you’ve managed to do that, by the way.”

Grantaire reels back, feeling like he’s just been punched in the face. “What,” he says weakly.

Enjolras blinks, puts a hand to his head, eyes focusing on Grantaire again. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that,” he says. Grantaire concentrates, but he can’t see any of the sticky unpleasant magic from the curse hovering around. Enjolras rubs the back of his neck and checks his pocket for something, turns back satisfied. “It’s true that I haven’t been feeling very well, but you were right, I am the leader. I don’t get days off for being a bit sick. You, on the other hand, look like you lost a fight with twelve people larger than you.”

Enjolras doesn’t remember you, he shouldn’t and _can’t_ remember you, Grantaire tells himself sternly, and even if he did, now wouldn’t be the time to beg forgiveness. For a minute it seemed like he was the Enjolras of Grantaire’s memory, always righteous in his anger but otherwise achingly kind, but he isn’t. This isn’t him. He’ll forget you as soon as you get your full strength back and glamour yourself away – it’ll hurt less that way.

Love is terrifying because what you love can be lost.

“I’m doing fine,” Grantaire lies, and because he’s never been able to give up human pop culture or a dark and acute sense of irony, he adds, “It’s just a flesh wound.”

He’s not sure which of them is more surprised at the burst of laughter that comes out of Enjolras’ mouth. “Still,” Enjolras says, and that’s a keen interest in his eyes now, and he looks so momentously, marvelously alive leaning forward in his seat that Grantaire also leans in slightly, helpless in his orbit. Grantaire doesn’t know how Fantine or anyone else thought he could do this, because clearly his self-control leaves a lot to be desired. “Try not to run into anyone’s fists, then.”

“It’s not for lack of trying,” Grantaire says, dry. “And you’re the one running a civil protest group – I’d say you’re the one more likely to be running into fists. I should be warning you.”

Enjolras shakes his head quickly, slight smile still on his face as he watches Grantaire. “I signed up for it,” he says. “You haven’t come before, so the balance of probability says you didn’t. I don’t even know who you are, really, beyond my mysterious savior.”

That drops a cold stone into Grantaire’s chest, but he supposes he should be grateful for yet another reminder that flirting with this new Enjolras, indulging his fixation, isn’t an option. This Enjolras isn’t his, even more than the Angelic version wasn’t – it’s more dangerous to be closer than it was to worship from afar. “No,” he agrees, and uses some of his diminished reserves of power to nudge the man away. “You don’t.”

Enjolras gets up, looking at Grantaire like he’s a puzzle, now. Grantaire doesn’t like that look – it says Enjolras is thinking about doing something ridiculous. Is his power truly so weak now that he can’t even lightly push someone away? “R,” Enjolras says, the letter rolling off his tongue. While Angels can understand all spoken languages, Grantaire will fully admit to having a soft spot for French.

“That’s still my name, as it was five minutes ago, when you sat down here,” he says, when it becomes evident that Enjolras is planning on standing there and looking at him for a while longer.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Enjolras says, corners of his mouth curling up. “Thanks again for saving my life. Can I buy you a coffee?”

Grantaire can only sigh in fond exasperation. His glamour probably managed to blur his face in Enjolras’ memory, but now that it’s down, he’s got no cover and Enjolras will remember him. He’d likely been frustrated with it all week, trying to come up with ways to repay the stranger who’d saved him. Who’d tried to save him. The bubble is still in his pocket, a mark of his unfinished job, and that’s what makes his decision for him.

“It was no trouble,” he says, because it’s easier than saying, ‘I did what I couldn’t do before, and I’m going to keep saving you even if it destroys me.’ That might be a little too heavy. “But I’m busy this week, sorry.”

“Another time, then,” Enjolras says. Unfair, Grantaire thinks, unfair of him to ask for coffee like it’s something that is possible. Unfair to give Grantaire that flare of hope – a vision of them laughing together, tiny smile lighting up Enjolras’ face even as he hides it in his espresso, runs through his mind and he pushes it away. Some things are not meant to be. “Please keep coming, though. As an unregistered Class 5 magic user, your opinion would be invaluable to our efforts, you know.”

“Don’t you have enough magic users? This place appears to be full of us,” Grantaire says. Enjolras really does seem to have done a good job surrounding himself by people who can protect him, even if he doesn’t have magic himself.

“I’m not one,” Enjolras says. “I haven’t got any magic at all, not even a tiny gift. Combeferre isn’t, and Marius isn’t. And even Courfeyrac isn’t as strong as you seem to be.”

Grantaire thinks about pointing out that Feuilly is actually stronger than Courfeyrac, but there’s no way for him to excuse knowing that if he’s posing as a mortal. He can’t very well say he feels people’s magic in the air, can see it shimmering in strands of Light if he tries hard, and Feuilly is completely tangled in it. He doesn’t have all the pieces yet, anyway, doesn’t have the full painting but only a corner of it. He’s perplexed enough whenever he remembers Valjean’s words to him during the Rebellion – Enjolras needs to be on Earth, needs to be the catalyst. Of what? Enjolras doesn’t have magic. “Not even a spark, huh?” he mumbles.

“None at all,” Enjolras responds, smiling ruefully. “Will you think about joining us?”

“Maybe another time,” Grantaire says, and tries in vain to nudge him away again with a tiny wisp of whatever power he has left. He knows he’s not strong enough to keep saying no.

“We meet here on Thursday nights,” Enjolras says, instead of offering again.

“I’ll think about it,” Grantaire says, and looks away, fingers tapping a rhythm on the table.

This time, Enjolras gives him one last searching glance before walking away and Éponine must see the emotions on his face because she just leans over and hugs him, wings shielding him and hiding them both from the humans. He leans into the warmth and breathes.

At the end of the meeting, he slips outside for few minutes to smoke his cigarette in peace. He’s got enough Light for a tiny flame, and the end lights up orange easily.

“Why are you hiding?” a voice asks – Grantaire would jump from the shock, but he’s too used to hearing that voice in his thoughts anyway.

“I’m contemplating the mysteries of the universe,” Grantaire replies, blowing a smoke ring and resolutely not looking at Enjolras.

“There are better places to do that than the alley behind the Musain,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire shrugs.

“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but I’d like to know – why don’t you want to commit to more meetings? We’re working for people like you, and we need stronger magic users who have a good understanding of the issues on our side,” he says. “People who are examples of our cause.”

Grantaire finally lets his eyes slide over. “I’m a busy A–,” he starts, then coughs it away. “A busy person, and I don’t want to be your cause. Besides, the world won’t change no matter what you do. There’s a path for all of us set out in stone, and all we do is walk on it, regardless of how much power we have.”

Enjolras hums. “You’re wrong,” he says. “There are infinite paths stretching out from each moment that goes by – it would be ridiculous to dismiss one before trying it. Determinism has never done anyone any favors, but free will has changed the whole world.”

I don’t care about changing the world, Grantaire wants to say, I only want you to be safe. I’m not fighting for humanity, I’m fighting for several very specific individuals, because I am an Angel who is absolute shit at his job. Enjolras is looking at him with earnest eyes and his best let-me-convince-you face. “Whatever you say,” Grantaire settles on, turning his eyes up to the cloudless sky.

“What are you afraid of?” Enjolras asks.

The ghost of a grin passes over Grantaire’s face. Never was much one for tactfulness, Enjolras. “You. The future. Everything,” he says, inflecting the melodrama.

“You barely know me,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire exhales, stubs out his cigarette. Isn’t that the problem? He shouldn’t have come out here in the first place. “Not at all,” he agrees, and heads back inside, resolutely not checking that Enjolras is also coming in behind him.

Éponine is waiting for him, and takes him by the arm. “Time to go,” she says.

He sneaks one last look as he’s being dragged out, only to find Enjolras staring back at him with another one of those riddle-solving facial expressions.

Let him think, Grantaire tells himself. There’s a path for him to follow, and your job isn’t to interfere, it’s to keep him safe. Settle for that.

Two days pass by and the curse shows no sign of disappearing, though it has diminished – Grantaire still can’t quite access his powers, can’t fly or hide himself well with an easy glamour or Create a masterpiece of light that doesn’t explode shortly thereafter, but his butterflies stay in the air for longer now and his wings don’t feel like cinderblocks strapped to his back, so he supposes it’s progress.

Éponine has helped him look through more books poached from Musichetta, but none have yielded results. Occasionally, Gavroche pops by and watches them read, not actually bothering to pick up a book herself – Grantaire doesn’t know if she even knows Musichetta, but apparently Éponine told her it was all right.

“You’ve got a look,” she says, Saturday morning. Or maybe afternoon; Grantaire loses track when he’s down here in the catacombs. Never could get the hang of time.

“What kind of look?” Grantaire asks.

“The I’m-about-to-do-something-stupid look. More specifically, the I’m-about-to-do-something-stupid-and-probably-Enjolras-related look. I don’t like it,” she says. She turns to Éponine. “Why are you friends with this guy again? He’s a lovestruck idiot.”

“I was a lovestruck idiot once,” Éponine replies. “We look out for our own kind, or we would be not only lovestruck but also fucking useless at getting anything done.”

“You’re still lovestruck,” Grantaire says, turning his page. “You’re as gone over Marius now as you ever were during the June Rebellion.”

Gavroche and Éponine stare at him. He backtracks and realizes what he said, and it becomes difficult to parse his thoughts.

“Breathe, and think very hard, R,” Éponine says, quiet but firm, before he can think himself into a heart attack. He counts backwards from ten, slow and steady, breathing. “Do you remember? Being human?”

“I’ve always gotten – flashes. A lot of the time they’re of Enjolras. A lot of the time we die,” he says. Now, they’re in his head, colors blazing by from memory – there’s so much red, and it’s difficult to concentrate and keep anything still. His brain hurts. “Sometimes we’re alive. I don’t realize when it happens when I’m – awake, it’s like seeing double for just a moment, but I think a lot of the people were the same. Names are powerful, and I’ve heard most of these before, I think, maybe. They’re familiar.” He buries his fingers in his hair and the texture steadies him. He’s here. He has wings, he has a body, he has what’s left of his Light. He’s right here. What’s happening to him?

“Don’t push it,” Éponine says, looking worried. He tries to smile at her – she shouldn’t be worried about him, he’s always fine. “You won’t remember everything at once. It started in flashes for me and Gav, too, but I don’t think it ever hurt – eventually it was mostly just there, in my head.”

“This fucking hurts,” Grantaire grits out, eyes narrowing as he tries to find peace within the maelstrom of images going through his head.

“I didn’t know this would happen,” Gavroche says, eyes wide as saucers. “Why didn’t I know this would happen – I can try to fix it?”

“Don’t,” Éponine says, a hand on her sister’s – brother’s? A little boy with dirty hands, a sharp grin, brave as anything, fell so early on at the barricade where they played at changing the world, it hurts – sister’s shoulder, holding her back. “We don’t know what you going in there will do to him, especially if remembering alone is causing him this much pain.”

The worst part about the healing factor and no-sleep-necessary thing, Grantaire thinks, is that he can’t pass out from the pain, he has to sit there and wait it out. He’s got experience with that, the past few days alone have constituted experience with that, but this is pretty fucking awful. It feels like someone is putting his brain through a blender, and then he’s laughing, a gasping and achy sort of thing, because the last time he felt anywhere near this way was in 1832, in June, his mouth tasting horrible after drinking all night in anticipation of dying – _you are incapable of believing_ echoes in his head – and his eyes blinded by summer’s sunlight streaming in from the window. Dying, a hand in his own. A kindness before oblivion.

Dying for Enjolras. Why is it always Enjolras?

He blinks, and the migraine has abated. He untangles his fingers from his hair where they’d been clutching mercilessly, and looks at Gavroche and Éponine who are both nervously looking back. He smiles again, honest this time, and there are probably tears in his eyes.

“Welcome back,” Éponine says, hesitant.

“R? You in there?” Gavroche asks, poking his shoulder after Grantaire can’t stop grinning madly at them.

He lunges and wraps them both in a hug, breaths coming harsh and fast, threatening sobs. “I’m so glad,” he says. “I’m glad you two are here. I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad it’s all of us.”

They hug him back, let him cling – they know he needs the touch or he’ll fly apart. “That was scary to watch. You did used to be an emotional drunk, but that was something else, R,” Gavroche says into Grantaire’s shoulder, and he pulls her back and ruffles her hair.

“You’re still a little shit,” Grantaire says.

“And you’re still a shithead with horrible vices,” Gavroche replies. “And yet, here we are.”

“His horrible vices have narrowed to just cigarettes, actually,” Éponine says. “And Enjolras, who I’d also qualify as a horrible vice.”

That’s a sobering thought, and Grantaire sighs. “This is the third time I’m in love with him,” he says. “Did I offend someone Upstairs? Someone in the First Bureau, maybe? Is there a prophecy?”

Gavroche smirks. “Nah,” she says. “You’re just a dipstick. And technically speaking, it’s the same you and the same him.”

He lets his head fall into his hands, not sure if that’s better or worse. “Fuck,” he says.

“Are you okay? How’s your Gift now, after that?” Éponine says. “We’ll need it. You’ll need it.”

“We still got a spell to untangle,” Gavroche agrees.

He wonders – pulls out his paintbrush and lets Light pool in his other hand. He paints a sunflower, up from the ground and pushes it to grow, opening its petals with his brush, and then draws another with his hand, tucking the unneeded paintbrush into his hair. He lets Light flow from his fingertips until he’s standing in a ring of impossibly tall sunflowers. He grins. His Gift is back.

“Impressive,” Musichetta says, where she’s emerged from – somewhere. How much had she been here for?

“Thanks,” Grantaire says, swallowing his grin. “They should live down here for a long time – my Gift doesn’t really let things die even if there’s no actual sun to warm them.”

“The books needed some happier company anyway, and I’m glad your Gift is back,” Musichetta agrees. Does she remember the failed students’ Rebellion? She can’t, Grantaire thinks. She was there, but she’s shown no sign of memory before – the Musichetta from back then was always laughing, and still always with Joly and Bossuet. They’re all living in a circle, it seems. If he thinks too hard about it, his head might explode. “Find anything useful?”

“Not yet,” Grantaire says. “At least, not in terms of how the fuck Montparnasse managed to meld his power so thoroughly to a human’s. That’s not supposed to happen.”

“No shit, but it’s happening,” Éponine says. “And it’s our job to fix it, before people start dying. R, you can’t walk around carrying another bubble of the curse, even one is risky.”

“What else am I supposed to do if I can’t figure this out?” Grantaire asks. “I can’t let it kill anyone. Gavroche, have you got Javert’s address?”

Gavroche stares at him for a few moments, shrewd, but produces a piece of paper from somewhere on her person and scribbles something on it. “Don’t fuck it up,” she says.

“I’ll try not to. I need to go, I should check on them all,” he says. Check on Enjolras.

Éponine sighs. “Fine. Just – be careful,” she says. “Be more careful.”

“I always am,” Grantaire mumbles, and heads up to the surface. There are still memories pressing at his mind, and he needs some air.

He’s back at full power, at least, so he glamours his wings away and begins the walk to Enjolras’ building – just to check, he tells himself. Paranoia is more justified when its object actually being hunted by dangerous things, so he’s less repentant than he perhaps should be for being overprotective. He at least has the excuse of a case now.

The bubble is still in his pocket, but he thinks it’ll hold for a while yet. Hopefully he’ll be able to figure out more information about how to stop all this before he has to fly to Enjolras’ rescue and show himself for more than human again.

With a replenishing curse that grows and adds to itself the longer it’s in place like this one, removal will be tricky no matter what. One of the casters would be able to help, or he’ll have to find others to be anchors.

The books weren’t helpful, but he can guess. He’s been an Angel for two damn centuries, he’s not completely useless.

It’s just that so far, he’d been dismissing either possibility as impossible – the casters are Montparnasse and Javert, both stalwart in their harsh convictions, and he can’t ask anyone else to endanger themselves by being his anchors. He won’t.

At night, the streets of Paris are so alive. The people mesh with those of many years ago in his head, now, and the streetlights are less dim than he remembers. He’s walked this way before, seen that alleyway filled with people of seedier persuasions. The café used to be a butcher shop, and the bookstore had been the bakery which, according to his memories, had sold the best beignets he’d ever had. Some things have remained – old wineries and certain shops that predate any version of him, and he marvels as he walks. Paris, so heavily watered with the blood of all its revolutionary children, has remained staunchly and obviously beautiful – incredibly, defiantly _Parisian,_ despite all that.

He passes through a more deserted block, shadows peeling from the walls. One of the streetlights is out up ahead, so he lets a spark of Light fall from his fingertips and rush up the pole towards it, catching the bulb and brightening it. It’s nice to be able to do that again.

“Fucking freak,” he hears from a young man standing nearby with a group of others. They look angry, spoiling for a fight. Their shoulders are all high around their necks and they scowl at him. They’re not just angry, they’re afraid, he realizes with a jolt.

His wings aren’t even visible, and they’re still afraid. Mortals, so petty sometimes, so frightened of anything they could call different – he shrugs, and keeps walking.

“Pay attention, you freak,” the voice comes again. Grantaire ignores it – he’s got a destination in mind, and it’s not like they can actually hurt him.

The first stone hits the back of his head, stinging a bit. An interesting, if unpleasant experience, he thinks. He wonders if they’ll keep throwing stones, like they think it’ll accomplish something. His answer comes with the second, which glances off his shoulder.

He sighs, turns around. “Is there something I can help you with?” he asks. He should’ve glamoured his entire body, not just his wings, but it’s too late for that now. Anyway, he didn’t want to test the limits of his returned power yet – he’d save that for when it was needed.

“Saw you using magic,” the leader says, ugly smirk on his pasty face now that he’s gotten Grantaire’s attention. Childish. He has bigger things to worry about than overgrown children. “Don’t want that shit here. You don’t belong here.”

Grantaire doesn’t respond. He doesn’t really think he needs to. He turns around and keeps walking. The third stone is bigger than the first two, and it’ll leave a bruise on the side of his head for a few minutes before the healing factor does its work. “Idiot, did you listen to me? Learn how to fucking answer when you’re being spoken to,” the guy says.

“I listened,” Grantaire says, and because he’s never had the sense of self-preservation God gave to the lowliest goldfish, he adds, “I merely chose to ignore you as not worth my time. Goodbye.”

If he really wanted to make a statement, he’d scare them away for real by shedding power in a small burst, but he’s saving it. Maybe this can play to his advantage – he’s near enough to Gavroche’s tip about Javert’s home.

“Fucker,” one of the henchmen snarls, advancing on him.

He doesn’t need sleep, anyway. “That’s me,” he agrees.

“What is this?” a new voice comes.

Someone is standing in the doorway to the home between Grantaire and the group of malevolent humans, silhouetted by the warm light from indoors. Bingo, Grantaire thinks, hiding his vicious smile.

“Fuck, he’s that nutty ex-cop,” Grantaire hears one of the group whisper. “He’s government, now.”

“Nothing, Officer,” the leader says. “We were just leaving, just warning this guy. He used his fucking sparky bullshit on your streetlight.”

The figure steps more clearly into Grantaire’s line of sight, and he has to restrain himself from triumphantly yelling – Javert is the one casting stern glances at the group of delinquents. Javert, who’d been obsessed with Valjean’s destruction in his past life. The double-vision is disorienting. “Go home,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks like a man in need of a lot of sleep.

The group scatters, until only Grantaire remains. He spreads his hands, palms up. Know thy enemy, he thinks. “I can return your streetlight to the way I found it, if you want,” Grantaire offers. An olive branch. Fantine had always told him – kindness and mercy, even when she was saying it so it was said out loud in her own ears. “I only wanted to help.”

“The help your kind can provide shouldn’t be flaunted,” Javert responds, as if he isn’t a magic user himself.

“It’s not illegal,” Grantaire says. “Magic users are subject to the same laws as everyone else. There’s no ban on magic as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“It isn’t illegal, but it is unwise. And dangerous for you. Nobody wants to see it on the streets, it’s bad enough when those with more fiery views begin to kill those who disagree. Witches, the poor, immigrants crawling through the city and living off of its charity,” Javert smiles, but it’s bitter. “That’s how you are seen. You would be wise to remember that.”

“Wise and I never got along,” Grantaire says. “But thanks for saving me and thanks for the tip, Monsieur..?”

Javert contemplates him, but Grantaire is confident he only sees the constructed glamour. His Gift is back in full force, and while Javert is a strong magic user, he’s more near Courfeyrac’s capability than Feuilly’s. He’s only more dangerous because of his placement in politics and Montparnasse’s influence. Maybe he is, after all of it, still worthy of salvation, as he had been once before. He knows, now, what Valjean had done back at the barricade – he’d not been so drunk that he didn’t notice the bullet gone astray, their prisoner escaped. He’d been looking, eyes always sharper than the others thought.

As Grantaire watches, Javert seems to reach a conclusion. “Javert,” he says, reaching out a hand to shake Grantaire’s. “Thank you for fixing the light. Don’t do it again.”

“You have a strange way of showing your gratitude,” Grantaire says. He feels he’s getting more human by the hour, pushing boundaries he should leave alone; spending so much time here had been a bad idea from the beginning, but there’s nothing for it.

“My gratitude was not letting you be stoned to death in front of my door,” Javert says, as if he should be given a medal for his graciousness.

“Thank you for that small decency,” Grantaire says. Kindness and mercy, Fantine says in his mind – he’ll have to draw it out, though.

Javert huffs. “Be on your way,” he says, and closes the door.

Grantaire hums to himself as he picks his way up the street to Enjolras’ apartment, playing over their conversation in his head. Javert, the policeman-bureaucrat, devotee of justice, moral compass set in stone. He could change it. He could look at the cracks of Javert, bring him tumbling down, if he wanted to. Everything would end – he would be throwing himself on the tender mercies of the Archangels, but there’s a high chance that without a focus point, the curse would break. That, or Montparnasse would just focus through someone else, and Grantaire wouldn’t be around to save anyone this time. Heaven’s rules against the misuse of Gifts are strong, especially if the misuse breaks any fragile humans. It would be a last resort, and he’s not sure he has it in him to do it, in any case. He hopes desperately that it won’t come to that, because he always was a coward.

He shakes his head. He’ll see.

Finally getting to Enjolras’ flat, he wonders if this was such a good idea after all; the light is still on in his rooms, streaming out onto the balcony Grantaire has already begun to think of as his own. He was going to fly up, but perhaps he should get a layout of the halls instead, if Enjolras is awake enough to notice him.

“Are you waiting for someone to let you into the building? I have a key, here, let me do it, if you need,” a voice says from behind him, probably wondering why he’s haunting the front door.

He turns around and is met with huge eyes and a hand stretched out to shake. The girl is maybe a few years Enjolras’ senior, and her smile for him is warm. He’s been doing a lot of introducing himself lately – he hopes it’ll still be easy to fade away once he’s finished this mission. Once he’s saved Enjolras for good, he’ll go back to Heaven and all these humans with their short lives will forget about him, and he’ll be left with his work. _Nisi Dominus frustra._

If he’s saved Enjolras. If he finishes the mission.

He shouldn’t respond, should shore up his glamour and walk away, but when he peers closer, he sees that this girl is a magic user. He blinks. Possibly the most powerful one he’s met thus far – but she keeps it tucked in close. He can only see it because he’s an Angel and it pours out of her skin, practically luminous if he focuses, probably stronger than Feuilly’s. “Yeah, thanks,” he finally says, shaking the girl’s hand. Her grip is surprisingly strong, and she beams like all the sunrises in the world have come at once.

“I’m Cosette,” she says. “I live here, sometimes. Come in, it’s getting chilly outside.”

“Most people call me R,” Grantaire says, guarded. He can feel the bubble pulsing in his pocket, small and malevolent. He pushes more energy into his glamour, but it’s no use now that Cosette’s attention is already on him. There’s nowhere to go. “So you can call me that, if you want.”

“Well, R,” Cosette says. “What floor are you looking for?”

“My – friend,” Grantaire begins, at a loss. Cosette exudes kindness like a star shedding its outer core, as though it’s effortless, as though Grantaire can’t even come close to touching her life with his Gift because even the holiest thing he can do is not as radiant as she is. He blinks again. It’s no wonder Marius fell in love with her, in that past. He wonders if this time will be the same – if Éponine’s love is always swallowed by the enormity of Cosette’s. “My friend lives in this building.”

He doesn’t actually remember what the number of Enjolras’ apartment is, and he hasn’t been welcomed here – should really have gone to the balcony, but it’s too late now. That’s what he gets for brooding in the evening half-dark.

“Okay, Mister Mysterious R,” Cosette says, digging out a key and opening the door. “Since Enjolras is the only one who gets weird visitors at weird times around here, I’m assuming you’re looking for him – tall and eloquent? Lots of opinions?”

“That sounds like him,” Grantaire agrees, stepping inside, careful to duck his wings through the doorway and fold them up more. He tries not to feel constrained by the walls – he has only himself to blame. This is what happens when he lets his mind wander.

“He’s in 3B,” Cosette says. “But I’m not sure if he’s in right now. At least, I saw him leave a couple of hours ago, before the sun went down, and I don’t think he’s come back yet.”

The light is on in his flat, so either Enjolras is home or someone else is. Panic races through Grantaire. “Thank you,” he tells Cosette, and takes the stairs up two at a time until he finds 3B.

There’s shuffling noises and some thumps coming from inside, and he swears quietly and lets his Light flood the keyhole and conform to the shape of the lock. When he throws the door open, palms out in case he needs to quickly Create a shield, he sees someone darting behind a corner.

The barrel of a gun peeks out and he’s proven justified in his caution, and he raises up a quick barrier to protect himself. The bullet hits the Light, flashes, and slides down from it, useless – his work won’t last long, not this time, when he’s just gotten his full strength back, but it should be enough if he concentrates on it. Angelic healing factor won’t do shit for multiple shots to the heart, so he has to be careful.

“Show yourself,” Grantaire calls, sounding braver than he feels.

The male Thenardier comes out from his hiding place, still pointing his gun at Grantaire, who curses in his head at the fact that such a powerful demon also feels the need to carry a gun. Maximum casualties, that’s Hell’s fucking modus operandi. Why make anything simple?

“R? Are you all right? I heard you swearing and I think a gunshot, what the hell is going on?” Cosette’s voice comes from behind him, and he stares at Thenardier as the man grins and moves his pistol slightly to the left, finger too close on the trigger – Grantaire moves without thinking, only a litany of _mortal-mortal-mortal-innocent_ flying through him. He pulls Cosette to himself and enfolds them both in his wings, pushing her down to the floor under him and hoping his hasty barrier will work at least a bit longer than he expects it to without constant reinforcement.

The next shot rings out but it’s hollow – his shield stopped it, and the one after that as well, but he hears a cracking and knows the barrier is done for. The fourth shot clips the top of his left wing, and the fifth punches through his leg like it’s paper. The sixth buries into his shoulder. He feels his head sink against the ground – he’s burning, he’s _burning,_ but he’s been close to this before. This must be his punishment for all the wrongs he’s done. It’s worse than what he thinks losing his powers would feel like, a horrible ripping of his being, he wants the emptiness of sleep that he hasn’t had in centuries, he can’t do this. He can’t.

He thinks he’s screaming, but things are fuzzy around the edges, so it might not be him. It hurts so much. He’ll heal, he’ll heal, he’ll heal, he keeps thinking. Angelic healing factor. What a crock of shit. He grits his teeth against the pain, but it doesn’t help much.

Thenardier must decide that enough is enough, because a few moments pass and Grantaire manages to turn his head to look but he’s gone, leaving an open window in his wake. A bolt of magic, blue and jagged like lightning, follows him – Cosette, placing a tracker? The tracker had to have taken a lot of energy, he thinks slowly. Cosette is so, so magic. His mind isn’t up to speed and his body is so weak with pain – he has to heal.

“R, look at me,” Cosette is saying into his ear. “R, you have to keep your eyes open. I’m going to call the hospital, and we’re going to get you fixed, this doesn’t happen in Paris, we’re going to fix everything, it’s going to be all right.”

He shakes his head, pushing himself up and off of her with some effort and letting his body thump against the wall. “No hospitals,” he chokes out. There’s red dripping down from the shoulder wound, making a mess. He doesn’t think he’s been shot with a gun since – since he died, that was horrible, that’s the familiarity of the burning explained. He’s always managed to shield himself from bullets, somehow, even if not from swords. He looks away from the drops. The sight of his own blood is always unnerving, despite the abstract knowledge that he’s healing. It’ll stain Enjolras’ carpeting, he thinks, lightheaded but feeling slightly better already, now that he isn’t exerting effort holding himself up. It’s been a while since he wanted this badly to be able to get drunk. “Give me – five minutes. It’ll heal. Water?”

“We need to get you to a hospital,” Cosette says. She presses her hands to his leg and shoulder, cool blue magic making it less awful, working like a cold salve. “I don’t care if you’re special because you have wings, I know other people with wings, you’re bleeding a lot, you just got shot three times, I’m taking you to a doctor. The water part is more doable, I think, so give me a second.”

He shakes his head again, movements still more sluggish than he wants, regardless of the huge decrease in pain. Wings? She sees his wings? It’s like he’s not even trying to hide. Fucking shit – she knows other Angels? He tries to discipline his mind to the point of actually being able to conceal his wings, but it’s hard and it hurts like something is clawing out of him. “Look,” he says, and winces as the bullet falls out of his leg and the blood shortly stops flowing, scabbing over and flaking slowly into new skin, Cosette staring as the change takes place under her fingers. “Healing. No hospitals.”

“That’s certainly – different,” Cosette manages. “Are you sure you’re going to heal fully? Isn’t there anyone I can call? I’m doing my best to make it hurt less, but I don’t know how long I can keep it up.”

“Can get Joly, if you’re so worried,” Grantaire says, trying to smile for her. It’s probably rough, being shot at with someone who you’ve met five minutes previously when they were loitering on your front porch. Not exactly a standard new-friend experience.

He suspects it may be time to give up on the idea of none of these mortals remembering him when he’s gone. Regardless of how he’s gone.

“How do I get your Joly?” Cosette asks, as Grantaire whimpers while the muscles reknitting in his shoulder push out the bullet lodged in there. He guesses he should count himself lucky Thenardier hadn’t been using bullets that broke apart – the pieces are almost as neat coming out of him as they were going in.

“Phone, left pocket,” he says. “Text him, so he doesn’t freak out.”

She ignores him and presses the call button once she fishes it out, but he’s still slumped against the wall and he’s so fucking tired. Healing takes it out of an Angel, and his wings heal much more slowly than the rest of him. It’s the second time in as many weeks he’ll be less than fighting fit.

“Is this Joly? I need you to come to 20 Rue Plumet, flat 3B, right now,” Cosette says. “Your friend R just got shot at by someone and now he’s healing but I don’t think he’s healing fast enough but he hasn’t let me call a hospital. Also, there are bullets falling out of him.”

Grantaire can hear Joly yelling in the earpiece from several meters away. “I’m all right,” he says, as loudly as he has the energy for, hoping the phone picks it up. Heavenly bureaucracy doesn’t leave much room for covering phone and data costs and all the minutiae of everyday human life. If the humans only knew – he can see the headlines now: 'Heaven downsizes due to budget cuts' and 'Why do Angels only carry shitty cellphones? Find out today!' It’s possible he’s lost too much blood, but the sweet oblivion of sleep hasn’t been an option to him for two centuries, and it isn’t like he can drink away the pain. At least, not unless Joly brings one of his more experimental tinctures, and Grantaire wouldn’t trust those even on his worst days, one of which this is shaping up to be.

Cosette ends the call. “Joly is coming,” she says.

“Joly is here,” says a figure on the balcony – that didn’t take long. Grantaire squints, thinks maybe he should get up, then swiftly decides against it. Joly’s wings shimmer with a glamour that’s hopefully strong enough to fool even Cosette.

“Thank you,” Grantaire says.

Joly hurries over and prods at the wound in his shoulder, looking increasingly upset about this turn of events. He runs a hand through his hair. “I told you to call us if you needed help, R,” he says. “Honestly, you were hurt so little time ago, you need to be more careful.”

“I didn’t exactly expect to run into one of the guys who cursed me last week ransacking Enjolras’ apartment, and yet, that’s what happened,” he says. Cosette has folded her hands in her lap, which is a damn shame, because whatever minor healing she was doing earlier is no longer in effect. He feels less like he’s on fire now, anyway, but the adjustment of muscle and bone is never pleasant.

“Healing up okay so far, though you’ve got a dislocated thumb,” Joly says, checking him over and popping his thumb back in. Grantaire yelps – it would’ve healed right eventually, but Joly can Mend so his help always make things go quicker, even if sometimes ‘quicker’ also means ‘more painful.’ “Wing will take longer, but you know that. Should be ready to fuck shit up by the three-day mark.”

“What the fuck,” a new and distinctly not-Cosette voice says from the door.

Naturally, this is when Enjolras makes his appearance.

Joly is staring, as if he’s seen a ghost – Grantaire’s forgotten that he almost never visits Downstairs besides for his cases. Does he remember? How many of them do, aside from Éponine and Gavroche?

Enjolras, apparently not able to fully process why there are two virtual strangers in his kitchen along with his terrifyingly-magical neighbor, has made himself busy boiling water for tea. Grantaire cranes his neck to check on his wing, and sees only the tip of a nasty red gash. Wings heal slowly, but still quicker than a mortal’s body. At this point, there’s no use hiding them.

“There was another man here, and he shot at us, but R saved me,” Cosette says. “I put a tracking spell on him so we can figure out where he is. I mean, if you want to figure out where he is, which I assume you do because he shot you.”

Grantaire holds up a hand. “That won’t be necessary,” he says, wishing sorely that he could take away that memory in her head. Nobody deserves that floating around their brain.

“We need to find him,” Enjolras says. “Who would ransack my house? If they’re with the opposition, it only adds to how illegal the way they’re doing things is. We can report them to the authorities.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “The police won’t help and I’m going to be completely healed by the time anyone believes us,” he says. In his head, he adds, especially since there’s no way I’m showing my wings for that particular meeting, if it happens.

Joly nods; his wings have been hidden the whole time from Enjolras but not from Cosette, who must have downright astronomically powerful magic if it allows her that degree of perception. “The police definitely won’t help,” Joly agrees, cheerful now that he has something to try and heal, even if his Gift won’t work directly on another Angel. The principles it’s given him still stand. He heads into the kitchen, calling out, “But R and I are excellent PIs, so we’re at your service.”

Enjolras narrows his eyes. “Private investigators with _wings_?” he asks.

“I don’t have wings,” Joly lies, straight-faced. He’s gotten better at lying recently, meaning Musichetta’s been teaching him how to navigate the human world.

“He does,” Enjolras says, glaring back at Joly and pointing to Grantaire. He feels like sinking into his barstool by Enjolras’ counter. If he collapsed into a small puddle of emotions right there, perhaps Enjolras would let him sleep in a nice bucket with a floral pattern. Maybe then he could pretend that he hadn’t fucked this up horrendously enough that multiple people were aware of his whole not-a-human deal and nobody would be the wiser. The Archangels will come and take this case from him at any minute, he’s almost positive, and this time his memories of Enjolras will be taken as well, and he’ll have fuck-all to show for his entire miserable Heavenly existence. He doesn’t think he can take that.

“It’s part of his magical abilities,” Joly says. That’s not untrue, Grantaire supposes. “Lots of people’s magic manifests in weird ways.” He stops there, before Enjolras can realize he’s just bullshitting.

Enjolras is still staring. “I guess it’s not every day you run into a magic user with wings,” Grantaire tries. “It’s really not a big deal, though. I’m just some guy.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “Yes, you are clearly a simple magic user with no other story behind you besides that you came to the Musain twice and saved my life and know a couple of my other friends,” he says.

“That’s right,” Grantaire says. He can hear Joly snort from the kitchen, where he’s digging uselessly through Enjolras’ cabinets looking for basic first aid, but Grantaire doesn’t mind that much anymore – as long as there’s a bandage on his gunshot wounds, they won’t prove to be an issue. “I’m no different to any other magic user in the world.”

“That’s nonsense,” Cosette says, gentle hands once more holding small bubbles of cold magic over his injuries. Grantaire has a feeling that he’s going to regret letting her say whatever it is she’s about to say, but he isn’t actually sure if he could manage to lift an arm to stop her right now. All his energy is going into healing, now that the bullets are out. “I know one other person with wings, and she’s not a magic user at all. I mean, she is, but she’s not exactly a human, I guess – I think that’s why I’m magic, at least, we’re related. Anyway, whatever you are, you’re not the same as ‘any magic user in the world,’ R. That’s silly, since everyone’s different.”

Grantaire’d been right when he thought he wouldn’t like it. Enjolras is staring at Cosette, wild-eyed – he seems to have gotten progressively more confused since walking in on the scene they’d made of his apartment. “You’re an Angel,” Enjolras mumbles, then he audibly sucks in a breath, stare getting even wider. “You’re the one who helped Feuilly, and Combeferre! Those were your feathers!”

“You left feathers with Feuilly and Combeferre? You had Feuilly and Combeferre as cases? Is Fantine a fool? Are you? Am I the only reasonable one left?” Joly demands, coming back in empty-handed after his fruitless search for bandages. “If I didn’t already worry enough about your ridiculous brain, I’d hit you over the head for that. R, you can’t fucking do that, you can’t leave tokens, especially when you know it’ll come back to haunt you.” He runs a hand through his hair. “This is such a fucking mess, fuck.”

“We’re still here,” Cosette points out.

“Yes, well, it no longer matters, does it? You’ve recognized him for what he is, so chances are we’re about to get obliterated off the map, old memories and new memories and all,” Joly says, more bitter than Grantaire has ever heard him. He does remember, he thinks, all those years ago. “We’ve pushed things too far as is, me coming here. We need to go, now, Grantaire. Wipe them, finish your case later. We need to leave.”

Grantaire rolls his shoulders and cringes a bit – still healing. He manages to stand, though, and faces Joly. “I thought you were going to stick with the absurd PI excuse, but I guess there’s no point now. Go. I can’t until I’ve finished it. There’s too much at stake,” he says, unable to help the way his eyes slide to Enjolras, who is still speechless, for once. “Joly, I’m carrying part of the curse around in my pocket, and if I go too far, the bubble I made will burst. Do you get it? They’ll die, if I fail. Again.”

“Who’s ‘they?’” Cosette says, at the same time as Enjolras says, “Again?”

Grantaire sighs. “‘They’ are Enjolras and his group of cheerful revolutionary friends, which I suppose also includes Cosette, now,” he says. If the Archangels are going to smite him where he stands, he may as well tell all. It won’t be remembered, anyway. “They’ve been cursed by one of their political enemies. It’s my job to stop the curse from killing them.” Also, the person who cast the curse is being helped by another Angel, and I will probably die in the attempt, he doesn’t add.

“I don’t need help from anyone to protect myself,” Enjolras says, frowning. “If you are an Angel, there are people in much more need than I am. Why not help them?”

In an exercise of remarkable restraint, Grantaire doesn’t begin laughing hysterically at the notion that Heaven is a just and fair arbiter of the future. “It doesn’t work like that. You damn well need help, because you’ve got no magic of your own and a head full of ideas that will get you fucking murdered. You’re the case I’ve been given,” he says, looking away. Enjolras shines too brightly.

“The case you won’t be able to finish unless we leave, now, because you’ll be a pancake on the ground due to Archangelic interference,” Joly says, pulling Grantaire over and draping his arm around his shoulders, letting Grantaire lean on him. “You need to disappear, R.”

He looks at Cosette, and then Enjolras again. He smiles without any feeling. “I can’t,” he says, soft and low. “No energy for anything besides trying to break the curse, and Cosette’s the most powerful magic user I’ve ever met. She’ll still see. Enjolras is – Enjolras.”

Joly huffs at him. “Feeling melodramatic, aren’t we? Enjolras is always Enjolras,” he says, but purses his lips and relents. “Fine, then. It’s been a good two fucking centuries. I hope they make it quick, but I’ll protect you while you work.”

“Thank you, Joly,” Grantaire says. “You don’t have to stay. It’s my fault. Like always.”

A slap rings out, and they both look to Cosette, shocked. Grantaire holds a hand to his stinging cheek. “Are you so resigned to dying?” Cosette asks, looking furious. Grantaire has seen that look before, but he can’t place it – can’t think at all, the buzzing of his brain louder and louder. “You can fight this. You can fight whatever’s coming for you. I’ll help you, I’ve been casting spells since before I learned how to talk. I’ve known Enjolras since childhood, and I’m not going to let him die, either.” She hesitates, looks at her hand and then quickly at his cheek, and blushes. “Sorry, that was really violent. But my point stands.”

“I deserved that, but _my_ point stands. I’ll die now or die later, but I’m the one who has to fix this curse,” Grantaire says.

“No dying now,” Joly says, taking Grantaire’s arm. “Not allowed. Let’s go.”

“I told you, I need to fix this,” Grantaire says.

“That one’s true,” a new voice says. “But it turns out you don’t get to hog all the glory, R. This story has a better ending than that. Nobody’s dying, not this time, and the Archangels won’t come for a while yet. They’ll wait until this plays out. You'll see.”

Jehan stands on the balcony facing the window, arms crossed and a smirk on their face. Behind him, Bahorel is grinning and cracking his knuckles, and Musichetta has her Protected by the arm, and it’s Bossuet, looking dazedly at Joly like he’s just discovered sunlight, and Éponine and Gavroche glaring at Grantaire in a matched pair. They’ve all crowded onto the balcony, wings glamoured away for the sake of the humans but obvious enough to Grantaire – not exactly hiding how they got there.

“Joly,” Bossuet says, his voice a whisper that carries. He’s grinning now, an impossible sort of happiness taking over his face. Louder, he says again, “Joly. Joly! Musichetta, thank you.”

“It wasn’t only for you,” she says, shoving him lightly forward. “It was for us.”

Joly looks like he’s been punched in the stomach, so Grantaire untangles himself and nudges him in their direction. “Go on, healer,” he says. “Go and heal.” It’s been a long time coming, and if Joly and Musichetta have remembered, it must have been an eternity for them. He doesn’t think he could have kept going for this long, if he’d had his human memories.

Joly smiles at him and squeezes his shoulder, then goes to envelop both Musichetta and Bossuet in a hug. Éponine makes her way to them and looks Enjolras up and down with a critical eye, as if she hadn’t seen him at the Musain a few days before. “He’ll do, I guess,” she says. “This time.”

“He’ll have to,” Jehan says, inside the room facing out, now, glowing slightly. “We haven’t got a lot of shots at this, so everyone will need to play their part.”

“Actually, we’ve only got one shot, so it’s gotta be awesome,” Bahorel says, sounding downright gleeful about it. “Otherwise, we all die. Just like old times, huh?”

“Does everyone remember?” Grantaire asks, concern and confusion warring for the dubious honor of being his main emotion. “Was I the last one?”

“Nah,” Bahorel says, reaching over and ruffling his hair, frowning at the scrape left on his wing. He makes a vague hand gesture presumably meant to encompass Enjolras and Cosette. “These don’t, yet. I think Bossuet’s the only one of the humans who does.”

“I’d like it if someone could tell me what exactly was going on,” Enjolras says loudly, “and why there are suddenly many people I’ve never met before in my life in my apartment. And Bossuet.”

Jehan glides over and puts a hand on Enjolras’ head, much to Enjolras’ consternation and Bahorel’s delight. “You’ve met us,” they say. “Think of this as a new chance. A better chance.”

“A chance at what?” Enjolras asks.

“Redemption. Living. Saving the world,” Jehan says. Grantaire valiantly resists the urge to snort at their crypticness. “Everything. You name it, we’re probably about to try and do it. Don’t you ever think of things that haven’t happened to you in this life? Things that can’t be true?”

“Sometimes I get – scenes,” Enjolras allows. He looks at Grantaire, blinks. “But they feel like memories. I saw you before, in my head. Before you saved me in the café, I mean. I dreamed of you.”

Grantaire doesn’t want to know what emotions are showing on his own face, because Éponine takes one glance and says, “Grantaire’s been dreaming of you for the past two centuries, if it’s any consolation.” At Grantaire’s wounded look, she shrugs. Traitor. “I don’t think we can go back from the whole Angel thing anymore, anyway. May as well embrace the impending chaos.”

Bahorel claps her on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!” he says.

“Two centuries?” Enjolras asks, still watching Grantaire.

“Someone really should tell him,” Joly says, head popping out from where he’s been huddled with Bossuet and Musichetta, wings overlapping.

“He’ll come to it in his own time,” Jehan says, not unkind. “We have work to do.”

“Come to what?” Enjolras asks. “I can fight my own battles, even magical ones. If the opposition is resorting to underhanded tactics, that’s only showing that they are on the moral low ground. You’ve helped my friends, but Angels and Heaven involving themselves in human politics? We have free will, you can’t directly interfere like this.”

“First of all, Heaven can do whatever the fuck it wants,” Joly says. “Secondly, you’re not really in a position to refuse our protection–”

“You’ll die, Enjolras,” Grantaire interrupts, feeling like the words are being ripped out of him. “I can’t let that happen. And it isn’t because you’re my case, it’s not about the triumph of destiny against choice this once, all right? Just – accept help, now. You need it. Don’t you see?” We all stood with you before, he thinks. The only place I’ve ever felt like I was doing something right was at your side, and I failed even at that the last time, he thinks. It’s blasphemous, but you’re the only thing I believe in, he thinks.

“I don’t know you,” Enjolras says, raking fingers through his hair. “I don’t know any of you. Why are you helping me?”

“Well, R is helping you because–” Bahorel begins, before Éponine slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Because our purpose is to dispense the justice of Heaven,” she says. “And to do what we can to turn malice and hatred into kindness and mercy and love. Trite, but true.”

A gasp – Cosette. “You’re the one all those years ago,” she says, pointing at Éponine, who takes a small step back at her vehemence. “You helped, when I was hiding. It was you, and Mama and Papa. Enjolras, please believe them, you have to. Do what they tell you. She saved our lives, don’t you remember? Before Papa gave you that ring.”

Éponine nods. “And R saved your friends,” she adds. “Feuilly, and Combeferre. Trust us.”

Enjolras meets Grantaire’s eyes, and he must see something in them, because his face settles into resolution. “I don’t remember any of you, not really,” he says. “But I trust Cosette when she tells me to believe someone. What am I believing you about?”

Éponine and Gavroche exchange a glance. “Well,” Gavroche begins, grinning wide and fake. Grantaire wrenches his thoughts away from Enjolras and raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. “It’s like this–”

“I have a plan,” Jehan says. “Mostly because I’ve seen some of it unfold, though of course there are many futures – that’s how it works, Enjolras, don’t give me that look, I remember it well but it’s unfair of you to turn it on me now – and only one future is the true one.”

“There will be sacrifice, in this future we dare to achieve,” Gavroche says, as if echoing someone else’s words. “But it will be borne because we love.”

Jehan nods. “This is Grantaire’s case, and he’s already tied to it, especially with what he just did for Cosette – her magic already recognizes him, and she’s likely one of the most powerful magic users we know. She will be equal to Javert, the magic user who is under the Protection of Montparnasse and who originally meant to simply turn you away from your causes. Obviously, Grantaire will be equal to Montparnasse, who is an Angel with some unfortunate inclinations towards murder.”

Enjolras looks at him, misgivings written all over his face. Grantaire looks away. “Doubt thou the stars are fire,” he murmurs, then raises his voice. “I’ll be able to do it, Enjolras, because though it’s a spectacularly bad idea, that’s always been the plan. But including Cosette will put her in danger. Including any of you puts you in danger, which is why I wanted to do this myself.”

“Shut up, R,” Éponine says.

“We choose the danger,” Musichetta says, patting him on the cheek. She and Bossuet and Joly have migrated closer to the rest of them, though they’re all still holding hands and standing too close. “Get over it, you asshole.”

“If you do this completely on your own,” Jehan says, “you will die. Therefore, you are not doing this on your own.”

“The Thenardiers and presumably all of the Patron-Minette demons are working with Montparnasse,” Éponine says. Someone is pounding at the door, but they all ignore it. “You’re strong, but you can’t face down an Angel, a few demons, and an exceptionally powerful magic user on your own, even if you can unlace the spell. Jehan is right.”

“Jehan is always right,” Bahorel supplies. “It gets frustrating.”

The lock on Enjolras’ door jingles and begins to turn, and everyone freezes except Jehan, who smiles brightly. Grantaire stretches out his arms and plants his feet, ready to make another shield even though he’s still drained from earlier.

“Enjolras, answer your fucking door! We need to know if you remember anything–” Courfeyrac yells, tumbling in, followed by Combeferre at a more sedate pace. Courfeyrac’s eyes go huge at the sight of all the people in the room. “Holy fuck. Holy fucking shit. Holy shit.”

“Courf,” Jehan says, grinning, and pulls Courfeyrac in for a kiss on the cheek. “Breathe, please.”

“We remembered,” Combeferre says, unnecessarily. Bahorel grabs him in a bear hug, so his next words are muffled. “Hello, once more, everyone. Hello, Enjolras. How did you manage to get all of our old friends together again?”

“I didn’t,” Enjolras protests, voice weak. “I just met most of these people today. You remembered what?”

“Oh, shit,” Courfeyrac says.

“Many things,” Combeferre says.

“They could help,” Jehan says. “Can you fight?”

“I’m magic and I’m pretty decent, and Combeferre is handy with a Glock. Feuilly’s magic is hardier than mine, too, and Marius is a good shot,” Courfeyrac lists. “What do you need us for?”

“Gillenormand’s people are out to kill you,” Gavroche says. She points at Enjolras. “More specifically, they’re out to kill him.”

“But not if we kill them first,” Bahorel says. “Are you in?”

Grantaire throws up his hands. “Fuck it, let’s get _all_ the fragile humans involved. It isn’t like this is a dangerous fucking operation which shouldn’t involve more people than is necessary because they’ll probably die,” he says.

“I agree with Grantaire,” Enjolras says.

“The stars may yet go dark,” Grantaire mutters. Joly throws him a pleading look.

Enjolras ignores him and barrels on. “If he’s the one who was assigned to this task, then he’s the one that should do it. But, since it directly affects me, I refuse to be a bystander in my own fate. I will stand by Grantaire and help him if and when he needs to fight anyone.”

“That’s really not what I had in mind,” Grantaire says. “You’re not helping, Enjolras. The whole point of you standing by is that you don’t get injured, because my part in this exercise is about preventing you from getting injured.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, R,” Éponine says, sharp-edged, “and so help me God, I will duct tape your mouth shut if you don’t stop and accept what we’re trying to give you, which is, incidentally, a chance at a future that lasts longer than a couple of weeks. Same goes for you, Enjolras. This will work, because it has to work. Does that settle things?”

Grantaire sighs and says nothing, because Éponine’s word is law, and she’s right about the insanity of trying to do this on his own. He’s said his piece already. Their dipshit friends are only trying to help them, but they’ll throw everyone’s lives away just to try and save his – one which, incidentally, isn’t worth all that much. Jehan can’t account for all possibilities. So be it – he won’t be at their funerals. Enjolras opens his mouth to protest and very quickly closes it again when Gavroche kicks him in the shin, but he’s still glaring at Éponine.

“So, my once-and-future comrades,” Courfeyrac says, airy. The tension in the room ratchets down a notch, and Grantaire breathes a little easier. He’d forgotten how easy Courfeyrac made everything. “Shall I get Feuilly and Marius?”

Grantaire makes his way out to the balcony while Combeferre goes to fetch Marius and Feuilly. Inside, Bossuet and Courfeyrac have taken over Enjolras’ kitchen – “Really, we’re all here enough that it’s kind of our kitchen, too, especially since Enjolras mostly uses it to microwave frozen food” – to see if they could manage to mix a drink that would actually have an effect on an Angel. Joly had insisted that he himself hadn’t been able to make one, but they needed a break anyway, and had promised to tell Grantaire if the attempt was successful. Eventually, he’ll have to go back inside and pretend this isn’t all going to end with blood on his hands despite his own best efforts to prevent that.

Musichetta’s laughter floats out of the flat as Grantaire lights up a cigarette. Can Angels develop addictions even though they aren’t impacted by the chemicals?

“Your friends care about you a lot,” Enjolras says, stepping out to join him.

“They care about you, too,” Grantaire says. At Enjolras’ frown, he adds, “Despite the fact that you don’t remember who they are.”

Enjolras shifts, resting their shoulders together, trying to comfort. He is effortlessly physical. If Grantaire were a defter hand at poetry, he could write sonnets to the way that Enjolras inhabits his own limbs. As things stand, he is an acolyte without offerings, can only memorize the warmth of Enjolras’s small patch of contact through their shirts and affix it in his mind, hoping it’s enough. It’s unlikely that he’ll ever get to paint much of anything again, anyway. “I remember – some of it,” Enjolras says finally. “I remember dying. I remember you dying.” He looks down, rubs his eyes with his knuckles. “I never intended any of us to die, I don’t think. I certainly don’t now.”

“That’s the price of change,” Grantaire says. “‘The revolution devours its children,’ and all that. If you took your morals to the government, they’d laugh you out of the room, because they’re not interested in more people dying, but they know that’s what will happen.”

“I cannot believe that change must always come at the price of innocent life. Love is capable of changing everything without such an awful cost. Lamarque supports us because she knows that to make society progress, we don’t need the absence of negative change, that hallmark of stable modern partisan systems. We need the presence of positive change. ‘Revolutionary acts are acts of love,’” Enjolras replies.

“Don’t quote Che at me. He took thousands of innocent lives himself, for all his lofty philosophies,” Grantaire says. “He wasn't someone to fucking emulate. And Lamarque may agree with what you think, but she’ll never put it into political play if she values her career.”

Enjolras huffs. “Of course he wasn’t someone to emulate, but some of what he said was worth repeating. None of us are without sin, his sins were just particularly egregious. She agrees with us on moral grounds, there’s no reason for her not to eventually push it into her politics. The world is changing. And anyway, what does an Angel know about what humans are trying to achieve? You have unlimited time.”

Grantaire laughs, but the sound is bitter to his ears. “I was human, and I’ve lived many human lifetimes over by now. Nothing changes, and every time people try to change things, they die. Rinse, repeat.”

“You died beside me once, in the name of change. That’s the only memory I see with perfect clarity, though I’ve seen you as you are now, fighting beside me in what I assume is Heaven. Why do that, if you believe in nothing?”

Grantaire can’t meet Enjolras’ eyes, not so bright and earnest. “You’re not allowed to ask me that,” he says to the air in front of him, quiet and hoarse. His cigarette is almost finished.

“Fine,” Enjolras says after a beat, though it sounds like he wants to protest. The stars wink down at them and the moon is almost full, today. If he could stand to look, Grantaire knows he would see it lining Enjolras’ features with silver instead of the gold that he belongs in. “Come back inside, sometime.”

Grantaire waves him off. “Yeah, soon,” he says, expecting Enjolras to retreat back into the flat. Fucked it up again, he thinks. Can never get it right. He pulls out another cigarette.

“I don’t think chainsmoking can possibly be healthy, even for Heavenly beings,” Enjolras says, still here and still disconcertingly close when Grantaire chances a glance to his side.

Grantaire shrugs. “I’ll be fine,” he says.

Enjolras peers at him, and he tries not to wilt under the scrutiny. “Our friends will help with this,” he says. Once Enjolras has accepted something, he can say it with such conviction that the most ardent disbelievers would have doubts. “We’ll be stronger working together.”

The door opens and slams shut, and there’s a flurry of noise from inside the flat. “I doubt it. Also, I think Marius and Feuilly are here,” Grantaire says, aiming for distance. Things are too honest, too raw between them for his peace of mind. Enjolras has disdained him in all lives; it’s a pattern he’s well-acquainted with. He may as well push it now.

“Stop doubting. And yes, they’ve arrived,” Enjolras says, turning to look in at the commotion through the window as Grantaire continues to look at him. His brows furrow. “Marius and Cosette are staring at each other and not moving at all. What’s happening?”

Grantaire inhales, sharp. “Fuck, sorry, I have to check on ‘Ponine,” Grantaire says, putting the unlit cigarette back into his pocket and opening the balcony door. “Éponine!”

“Gavroche is with her – she went to hide down the hall right after Courfeyrac first ran out to get Marius,” Musichetta tells him.

He nods his thanks and heads down the small hallway, knocks on the bathroom door. “It’s me, it’s R,” he says, leaning his forehead against the wood. It’s steadying.

Gavroche opens the door, wings spread wide enough to block anything behind her. “She’s okay,” she says. “I mean, she’ll be okay. Right now, she’s pretty shitty. Not that we didn’t know this would happen.”

“Can I come in?” Grantaire asks.

Gavroche steps aside and out. “You can take over,” she says, and closes the door behind herself.

Grantaire picks his way over to where Éponine sits, hunched in on herself against the wall with her knees hugged tightly to her chest. He settles down next to her, slinging an arm around her shoulders and curling his wings around both of them. “I kept thinking, ‘maybe this time,’ you know?” Éponine says. She’s not crying, though there are tear tracks down her face. “More fool me.”

“Us,” Grantaire corrects. “I’m in it with you, ‘Ponine. We’re just on the unlucky end of history’s repetitions.”

“Maybe I should’ve gone with Montparnasse,” Éponine says. “He asked me, you know. Said we don’t belong in Heaven, anyway, us who came from nothing. Us bad soldiers who want our freedom more than we want a place to belong. He sounded like Enjolras, he really did, all convinced that what he was doing was worthy somehow. Like there’s anything out there that matters besides putting love into the world. Dumbass. I thought – how can I protect Marius if I’m only a mortal, too? How can I look out for your sorry ass? What will Gav say? And I didn’t. Told him to fuck right off.”

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire says, hopes she understands that he means everything. He can be honest here in the cocoon of his wings, but he’s unexpectedly run out of words.

“It’s all right,” Éponine says, hiccups a little. She burrows into his side. “I mean, it’s not all right, but I’ll be okay eventually. I always am.”

“Maybe this time it really will work out,” Grantaire says, halfhearted.

Éponine snorts. “You know that English saying, ‘hope springs eternal?’ The Russian analogue is ‘hope dies last.’ I think the Russians had it right on that one.”

Before Grantaire can respond, there’s a knock at the bathroom door.

“R? Éponine? Please come out, we have a plan,” Musichetta’s voice says.

“We had a plan an hour ago, it involved some trite shit about love. Knowing Jehan, things can’t have changed that much,” Grantaire calls. Éponine meets his eyes and gives him a small nod, so he relents. “Give us a few minutes.”

Éponine gathers herself, wiping her eyes and taking a deep breath. “Let’s go, R,” she says, standing up.

“You lead, and I’ll follow,” Grantaire says. They troop out.

“This is Grantaire’s case,” Jehan starts, once they’ve all assembled around Enjolras’ living room on every available horizontal surface. Marius is casting worried glances towards Éponine, but his hand is laced with Cosette’s and Éponine stares resolutely ahead. Grantaire’s chest hurts, and he tries to glean some of her resolve to avoid looking at Enjolras. Jehan coughs, and continues. “Since it’s Grantaire’s case, he will be taking point. Valjean gave you the sword, yes?”

“Yes,” Grantaire says, slowly.

Evidently sensing his confusion, Jehan grins and taps their temple. “Prophet,” they say. “You will be the first point in our triangle. The next two will require mortals – one magic user and one baseline human. Cosette has already volunteered to be the magic user, because she is the most powerful, likely because of her lineage. If any have objections to this, please voice them now.”

“Why are we involving the mortals in the first place?” Grantaire asks. It’s a last-ditch effort to try and stop these stubborn assholes from doing anything, but he has to make it. “Angels are nearly indestructible. I don’t want to risk any more lives than I have to undoing Montparnasse’s bullshit.”

“Than we have to,” Jehan amends lightly. “It’s the only way to achieve the balance, Grantaire. Angel, magician, and human. Love, courage, and strength.”

“You couldn’t get rid of us if you tried,” Bahorel says, knocking his shoulder into Grantaire’s. “And you did try, and yet, here we are. Get over it.”

“Bahorel’s right. So – Grantaire is the Angel, and Cosette is the magic user,” Jehan says. “Do any volunteer to be the baseline human?”

“I will be the human third point,” Enjolras says, stepping forward as soon as Jehan closes his mouth.

No, no, no. All he’s been trying to do is keep him safe. “Enjolras, please, don’t do this,” Grantaire says, trying to keep the desperation from his voice.

“It’s my life,” Enjolras says, far more gentle than Grantaire’s ever heard him. Perhaps this human life has taught him softness, he thinks, then dismisses it. Enjolras is carved of marble, uncompromising as always. Time moves very slowly.

“Please,” Grantaire tries again, because he has to. He can feel everyone’s eyes on him, some pitying and some understanding, but he doesn’t care.

“This is what I choose,” Enjolras says, firmer. “Like Musichetta said – I choose the danger. It is my choice. My life and my free will. Do you understand, Grantaire?”

It always comes down to that, doesn’t it? “Yes,” Grantaire breathes, and time begins to move at a normal pace again.

“Very well,” Jehan says. “The compact is sealed. Enjolras will act as the anchor, where Grantaire’s and Cosette’s magics can freely navigate through one another without imminent catastrophe. Montparnasse is not using an anchor.”

“He’s partnered with some demons, by the looks of it,” Gavroche says, scowls. “Some nasty ones. And there’s Javert, his Protected. The cause of all this mess.”

“We’ve got our own small army, apparently,” Feuilly says. “This is gonna be fun.”

“Wait,” Cosette says. “Javert? He’s not a bad man, how is he involved in all of this?”

“He works for Gillenormand,” Grantaire says. “Montparnasse was assigned to Protect him, revealed himself, and cast a spell which he meant to change people’s minds, but magic doesn’t work like that – it’s not built to subjugate people’s thoughts. Even Angels who are Gifted with telepathy can’t do that, the most a strong spell can do is make them forget maybe a few days of memories. This spell is really fucking strong and it’s going to kill people if I don’t stop it – you can’t just fuck with people’s heads. It’s the reason I was assigned to solve this in the first place. Enjolras and his group of humans are being poisoned by it.”

“That’s what you drew out of Enjolras, that night at the Musain,” Combeferre says, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “The toxic magic.”

“Hole in one,” Gavroche says. “He’s been carrying it around in that bubble ever since, like the idiot that he is, even though he doesn’t need to.”

“It’s sealed, it’s not dangerous,” Grantaire protests. “And what the fuck else would I do with it?”

“Yeah? What happens when it breaks the seal? Magic like that’s not liable to be kept caged up for a long time, R,” Éponine says.

“Then it latches onto the closest person,” Courfeyrac says. “That’s what happens with trapped magic. It’ll latch onto you.”

“I can handle it,” Grantaire says, pointing at himself. “Nearly indestructible celestial being.”

“You can’t damn well handle it, it’ll lodge itself into you and eat away at your own magic,” Joly says. “You can’t lie to me, R, I’m a doctor.”

“It’s fine,” Grantaire says, shying away from the hand Enjolras lays too-gently on his shoulder. “Can we please get back to the plan?”

“The plan depends on you being at full strength,” Musichetta says.

“I will be at full strength, it’s fine where it is,” Grantaire says, shrinking back even more. There are too many people in this room and they all want too much from him. He has to be the nearest person to his bubble because collateral damage is unacceptable. Why don’t they get it? Out of all of them, he’s the most expendable.

“Oh, honestly, I’m surrounded by idiots,” Gavroche says, rolling her eyes. Before he can so much as move, Grantaire’s pocket is empty and she’s holding the bubble aloft.

“Don’t–” he says, but it’s futile.

Gavroche digs her thumbs in and cracks it open like an egg, the slimy magic inside slipping out into her cradled palms. “For something so small, you cause a shitload of trouble,” she says, voice stern, and then there’s a growing light around her hands and Grantaire has to throw his arm over his eyes as it blinds him because the whole room is flooded with brightness.

A few moments pass where he can neither see nor hear anything – there’s only a rushing in his ears like he’s stepped into a windstorm, the threads of magic in the air coalescing bright and hot on his skin. It passes, and the wind stops. He opens his eyes and Gavroche is holding a small pile of ashes where the bubble once was. “You’re all awfully unobservant, aren’t you? I should talk to Fantine about firing you.”

“We can’t get fired, we can only get killed or sent to Earth,” Grantaire says absently, still staring, trying to figure it out. There’s no regular Angel nearly powerful enough to do that. A breath, puzzle pieces coming together. “Fuck. You’re not Protecting anyone here, are you? You’re the Chief of the First Bureau.”

“Finally got it, champ. Only took you about a zillion years,” Gavroche says, dusting her hands off.

“Bureau Chiefs don’t get involved down here. You’ve been missing for years,” Joly says.

Gavroche is cheerful. “Twenty-five of them,” she says. “Earth’s more interesting than Heaven, anyway, and this has all been in the works for a damn long time. Things are a long ways bigger than you think they are. Even Jehan over there doesn’t know it all, though they know more than the lot of you. Mostly because I told them.”

“What do you mean, things are bigger?” Grantaire asks.

Gavroche blinks guilelessly. “Well, for starters, Montparnasse is just the tip, so you can pretty much scrap your smaller ideas. We’re taking down the Council.”

“What the fuck,” Grantaire says.

Éponine holds her hands up. “I didn’t know this part, don’t look at me,” she says.

“I did not sign up for this,” Bahorel says, “but I like where this is going.”

Grantaire is still staring at Gavroche. This is what it’s all been leading up to? This madcap plan to bring down the de facto government of Heaven to prove that free will wins the day? People dying, again, for a freedom that might not come – he’s not sure he can do this. 

“Er,” Marius says. “Could someone explain what the Council is? It sounds ominous.”

“Someone explain to the humans,” Gavroche says. “I need to rest a few moments, that took a lot of effort. And for fuck’s sake, someone tell Enjolras about himself.”

Jehan steps forward. “The Archangels’ Council is the major deciding body of Heaven,” they say. “It is made up of extraordinarily powerful Angels who have existed since the beginning of Earth – they answer only to God, and seeing as a number of us don’t believe God is really around anymore, we suspect they answer to nobody. This has led to several conflicts over the years, including three Rebellions in Heaven which were all bloody and horrible. I have the Gift of being able to see what lies ahead, but it can take many forms – that is how it should be. It is not for anyone but God to decide which future is the truest, and the meddling of Angels has often led to unintended consequences, particularly when the Archangels simply do what they think is best. Angels and humans deserve their free will. If the price of that free will is high, then so be it. I fought for it once with words when I could not in deeds, and I will fight for it again, this time on the battlefield with my friends.”

“You were part of the last Rebellion?” Enjolras asks.

“All of us were,” Grantaire says, hesitates, then steels himself. “You were the one who led the last Rebellion, and we followed you. You were the strongest Angel in the Bureau of Protection aside from the Bureau Chief, and you were called the Red Guardian, for your sword and your strength. We lost.” You fell to Earth, and I wasn’t strong enough to follow you down, he adds mentally. He would offer to give the sword back to its rightful owner, but he’s still unsure as to whether or not he can actually produce it, and humans can’t wield Heavensteel, anyway. It’s far too heavy, and tends to burn mortal hands and sear mortal eyes. “You led a human rebellion, as well – in 1832. When someone chooses to become an Angel, they choose to forget their human lives and start anew, so that all in the service of God come into it as equals. But I remembered that, in flashes, until I remembered everything. Angels do not have free will, but changes of the mind and heart are difficult to maintain if pressed, even for the Archangels. So – I remember. You led us back then, too." He pauses, can't stop his own tiny smile. "There is no life where you aren’t trying to break down walls, Enjolras.”

“But why would you follow me again,” Enjolras starts, looking around. All eyes are on him – as always, they stand together. “If I only led you to ruin?”

“We believed in you,” Jehan says.

“Still do,” Joly says. “Against my wiser instincts, I might add. I have already twice sworn to go through fire. Maybe this time, we’ll succeed. Obviously, our human friends also believe in you.”

Enjolras looks – humbled. He always did have trouble with shows of faith in himself. Grantaire snorts quietly. That’s Enjolras; belief in causes is understood, while belief in him is illogical.

Moments tick by. Enjolras flicks his eyes up to meet Grantaire’s, and nods. “Okay,” he says. “How do we get to the Council from Earth, if they’re all-powerful? What’s their weakness?”

Gavroche lazily cracks one eye open. “What did you think the pact was for? Montparnasse is strong, but he’s our way in. He isn’t wrong, he’s fighting the same thing we are, just in a much more destructive way, because he’s a dumbass. We don’t need to get their attention, he’s already got it. All we need to do is step in, prevent him from killing anyone, and break the Archangels’ power.”

“‘All we need to do,’” mimics Grantaire. “Sounds perfectly easy.”

“Cast a spell?” Cosette ventures.

“Not just any spell,” Jehan says. “The ideal balance that can now exist between you, Grantaire, and Enjolras. It’s the only way. Courage, strength, and love.”

“Great,” says Grantaire. “Me at the center of a spell taking out not only an incredibly powerful Angel, some demons, and a human, but also depowering the Archangels’ Council. There’s no way this could possibly go wrong.”

“If you don’t think you can do it–” Enjolras begins.

“Don’t, Enjolras,” Grantaire cuts him off. “At this point, ‘can’ doesn’t matter. I will do it, because apparently someone decided giving me this task was a good idea. I’ve got no other choice.”

“You always have a choice,” Enjolras says. “That’s what we’re fighting for. That’s the whole point.”

“Let me rephrase, then, if it makes you happy: I will do it because I choose to,” Grantaire says. I choose to protect everything I love even if it kills me. That’s the only choice I could ever make. It’s too late for anything else – love is terrifying because it makes you weak, but then I’ve been weak from the start.

Jehan puts their hand on his shoulder. “You think very loudly, my friend,” they say. “Remember hope.”

Grantaire laughs, tired and stupid. “It’s all I’ve got,” he says.

“Not all,” Jehan says. “The plan remains. I’ll teach you and Cosette the spell. It’s going to take a great deal of concentration from both of you, so the rest of us will keep Montparnasse’s cronies occupied while you cast. Enjolras, Gavroche will teach you how to stabilize your mind enough to be an anchor and a channel through which Grantaire and Cosette can work together. You should also listen while I explain the spellwork, so that you have the fundamentals down.”

“If it really is Javert behind all this, can’t I go speak with him?” Cosette asks. “He was always kind to me when he saw that I could use magic. Why would he do something like this?”

He’d been kind to Grantaire, too. Or at least he’d shown some sort of moral code. “Maybe he thinks he’s doing what is best,” Grantaire says. “Keeping the status quo, keeping your group from doing anything too loud. Preaching stability. I think that was his goal.”

“Let me talk to him,” Cosette repeats. “I don’t want to fight him. He’s almost family to me – Papa always had a soft spot for him.”

“If you can convince him, it cuts the base out of the curse, and gives us one less thing to fight,” Jehan says. “But if you can’t, bear in mind that you will have given the other side some bargaining chips.”

“It has to be a good idea to try,” Enjolras says. “Especially if he doesn’t fully understand what he’s actually doing.”

Grantaire finds that exceedingly unlikely. Javert seemed a man in control of his own priorities – those priorities are just skewed and firmly binary.

“Fine. First, though, we’ll work through the spell together,” Jehan says firmly. “Cosette, Enjolras – you’ll need to get acclimated to Grantaire’s magic. Especially you, Enjolras, since you’ve never had magic and you won’t be able to control it. The good news is, you don’t really have to, since you’re the anchor. Your part will be mainly about concentration.”

Enjolras nods. “Should I keep anything else in mind?” he asks.

“Don’t jump in front of any bullets,” Grantaire says. “I can get shot a few times and be perfectly fine in ten minutes, you can’t. I’ll shield both you and Cosette as much as I can, but you need to help me do that by not recklessly endangering yourself. You’re human, Enjolras. You’re not indestructible.”

“I know that,” Enjolras says. “I’ve always known that, but you’re the one who keeps trying to paint me as more than just a person. Every life, you treat me as a deity. I’ve only ever been a man.”

Everyone has fallen silent around them. “You are as untouchable as a deity, so maybe it eases my chest pains to imagine you as one,” Grantaire says at last. “If you are only a man, we’re on the same playing ground, and I can’t accept that, Enjolras. I’ve never had that kind of luxury, because thinking that way would certainly kill me. Do you understand?”

“I’m a man, no better than any other,” Enjolras says. “Don’t you recognize that?”

Grantaire shakes his head, helpless. “Please don’t make me explain anything more,” he says.

Enjolras looks like he’s going to press the issue, but Courfeyrac interrupts, timely as ever. If they live through this, Grantaire resolves to send him a fruit basket. “Explain later. Or don’t. But I want to know – what are the rest of us going to do, Jehan?” he asks. “What can we do against all these super Angels, or whatever?”

“Bahorel, Joly, and Musichetta will train you if you’re mortal,” Jehan says. “You’ll be fighting at least some demons and likely some magic users as well, and who knows what else. The three-point pact formed between Enjolras, Grantaire, and Cosette will be the central locus, but a circle of companions will act as a lens and will, in theory, bounce the spell strongly enough to knock out the power of the Archangels.”

“In theory?” Grantaire asks. “What happens if it doesn’t work? What happens if it does work, and Heaven is without leadership?”

“Fantine, Valjean, and Gavroche will take over in the interim. What we’re really doing is rendering the telepathy useless and the future unknowable. Not wiping the Council out, just demoting them, I suppose,” Jehan says, slight smile on their face. “So I guess we won’t find out the results until we try it. Which, really, is how all things should work – destiny is bullshit. We can make a better one cobbled out of matchsticks and true free will than what we get fed by the Council.”

“It’s not the most batshit plan you’ve ever participated in, R,” Éponine says. “It’s not even the most batshit you’ve come up with.”

Grantaire frowns. “We can’t know that things will be better,” he says. “I only agreed to stop Montparnasse from killing innocent people. I didn’t want to instigate a revolution. Actually, I specifically wanted to avoid that.”

“If things are as you say,” Combeferre says, words measured carefully as always, “and the Council has really been manipulating the free will of both humans and Angels for centuries, I don’t see any other way out.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Grantaire says. Eight bullets. There had been eight bullets, eight red blood-blossoms staining white cotton. “I don’t want anyone to die.”

“You won’t have to,” Jehan says. “Things will be better, this time. This will work.”

“Nobody has to die,” Éponine says. “Not this time.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” Grantaire says, shaking his head. It’s too much, again. He closes his eyes. “I can’t.”

A hand on his shoulder. He knows that hand – he’s traced it in his head a million times, and on paper from memory a million more. “You don’t have to do this,” Enjolras says, “but if it means anything to you, I think that you can. And I don’t think anyone has to die.”

Enjolras has need of him. Enjolras will do this anyway, with or without Grantaire to protect him, because Enjolras is Enjolras in every lifetime – determined and strong and ready to give everything for a better world. Grantaire feels almost whole when he sees Enjolras soar. Love is terrifying, he thinks faintly. It’s breakable. It’s all there is.

He opens his eyes. Enjolras is looking back at him, steady. “Okay,” he says. Inhale, exhale. “Okay.” 

It really isn’t the most foolhardy plan he’s ever participated in – he’d have to grant that dubious honor to Enjolras’ rebellion in 1832. This is comparatively well-plotted. He’s hesitant to think that it might succeed, but Enjolras will have enough belief for all of them.

The humans are working on basic fighting skills with Bahorel, and Joly and Musichetta are teaching more complicated defense spells and magic that isn’t found in any mortal spellbooks. Feuilly looks delighted with these developments; she’s finally getting the Angelic magic education that she’d asked Grantaire to provide, so long ago. Marius and Combeferre are handy enough with guns that they’ve moved on to fencing swords pulled out of a dusty closet somewhere in the apartment; Bossuet works on first aid with Joly because he’s evidently as awful a shot in this life as he was in the previous one.

Éponine stands and watches everyone but Marius, carefully keeping her eyes away from him as he parries and lunges at Combeferre. Grantaire’s heart hurts for her.

In his own corner of Enjolras’ flat, Jehan has him standing in a small triangle with Cosette and Enjolras, Enjolras stubborn as ever and Cosette biting her lip, nervous. She doesn’t want anyone to die, either – Grantaire thinks he could grow to like her, this girl he accidentally saved. She seems like a good person. It’s too bad he’s unlikely to last the week, he thinks. Gallows humor looks like the last recourse to sanity he has, convinced as everyone else is that this will work.

“Please, link hands for me,” Jehan says. Gavroche watches them out of one eye, still draped across an armchair, tired from burning up the bubble. First Bureau Chief, fucking shit. Everything is so much bigger than he expected.

Grantaire takes Cosette’s hand, and feels Enjolras linking their fingers together though he stridently avoids making eye contact.

“Grantaire, you’re the Angel, so you’re the one with the most powerful magic,” Jehan says. “You’ll have to visualize something to Create – that will be the base on which everything else will stand, but for now, it can be anything. Since this is practice, and you’re not a telepath, say what you’re thinking out loud so that Cosette and Enjolras can help. Concentrate on channeling, not just making. Start small. Think Third Bureau basic training. But don’t use your hands.”

Grantaire’s eyes slip closed. “I’m going to Create a butterfly,” he says. “It’ll be a small burst of magic – I see the threads of Light in the air, and they’ll coalesce into the shape that I want when I push it, though I’m not used to not using my hands. I’ll try to make it quick so it isn’t too much of a strain.”

“Okay,” Jehan says, somewhere behind Grantaire, now. “Cosette, you’re going to concentrate on both shape and adding power. Enjolras, open yourself up to the magic. You’re the anchor.”

Enjolras hums an affirmative.

“Begin, Grantaire,” Jehan says.

Enjolras’ hand is tight in his, and Cosette’s is warm. He pulls at the magic around them, willing it to take the shape he wants, threads knitting together. Cosette’s magic sparks through his skin, pushing through him without any pain. He feels – reinforced, like he’s been given a wall to lean on. Their combined power thrums in his chest, surging outwards on his exhales and molding the Light to give it wings. Enjolras sucks in a breath, teeth clicking together. Grantaire opens his eyes, alarmed, but Enjolras looks uninjured, and hasn’t let go of his hand. His eyes are open as well, and his face is a picture of unabashed wonder.

In front of him, a huge butterfly hovers in the air, not made of Grantaire’s usual moon-colored light, but tinted the blue of Cosette’s. Around it, smaller butterflies float, wings flapping much more slowly than those of their nonmagical counterparts. Each one has wings that are textured differently, dozens of different designs made of Light.

Grantaire smiles, and the butterflies break free of their circle, flying on their own. They dance about the room, where everyone has stopped moving to watch them. The biggest one, the first one, lands carefully on Éponine’s nose, and she laughs with delight until it softly lifts off again. The rest of them continue to flutter, occasionally alighting on someone.

Jehan is grinning. “I told you to have some hope, R,” they say. A butterfly, small and stripy, rests in their hair, wings moving slowly every few moments.

“You did,” Grantaire agrees. Cosette and Enjolras are calm and solid beside him, and Enjolras’ palm is soft against his.

Yeah, okay, he allows. Maybe.

There’s safety in numbers, so he and Enjolras go with Cosette when she insists on talking to Javert in the morning. Grantaire’s at full strength, throwing a glamour over both of them as they follow at a safe distance, but Enjolras is tired. He hadn’t slept much, with thirteen other beings making noise in his apartment, but of course he’d insisted on coming with them – at least Combeferre had forced him to take one of the Glocks that Gavroche had produced from who-knows-where.

“We’re a team,” Enjolras had said, when Grantaire frowned at him for volunteering. “Let me help.”

Impossible, foolhardy, brave Enjolras. “I won’t go to your funeral,” Grantaire had said, shrugging. Lied, again. Sometimes he feels like he lies so often that it’s become actively difficult to tell the truth.

Javert’s door creaks open a few centimeters when Cosette knocks, but then he sees her and opens it wide, smiling and kissing her on either cheek, inviting her inside.

“He was angry, in that life,” Enjolras whispers. His eyes are far away. “I remember him angry. He was the traitor in our midst, and he never smiled.”

“Yes,” Grantaire agrees. “But I don’t think it’s possible to resist smiling when Cosette wants you to smile. It’s no wonder she’s so powerful. She’s got so much love in her heart for everything – caring so much is probably difficult.”

Enjolras is looking at him, unbelievably fond, for a moment the Enjolras with wings that he remembers, limned in starlight. Then it fades, back to this Enjolras. “Don’t be deliberately obtuse,” he says.

Grantaire blinks. “I wasn’t,” he says, honest for once.

A shadow slinks towards Javert’s door, materializing into Claquesous in a hideous mask. He raises his hand to knock, and Grantaire curses under his breath.

“What is that?” Enjolras asks.

“One of Montparnasse’s pet demons,” Grantaire says, squaring his shoulders and centering himself. Of all the hours in the day, Claquesous picked this one to drop by. He needs his Light, just in case.

The door creaks open again, Javert wary of the demon. Claquesous doesn’t lift the mask, but his voice is as oily as everything else about him. “We’ve got something that will make the curse more potent, but we’ll need some of your power, as well. Wouldn’t want this to go wrong when all the pieces are about to be put into play, would we?”

“What would you have me do?” Javert asks, frowning, blocking the door with his body. “I can’t meet with Montparnasse now.”

“No need,” Claquesous says. “All you have to do is push some of your power into this, and Montparnasse and the Thenardiers will do the rest. It’s been spelled so it’ll hold your magic, like a container.”

He holds out a palm, a leather cord dangling from his fingers. The threads of magic in the air around Claquesous recoil from his motions, as if repelled by his being – his hands look clawed in Grantaire’s overlaid vision. Enjolras lifts his hand to his neck and then pats his pocket, goes completely still.

“What is it?” Grantaire whispers.

“That’s the ring Cosette’s father gave me,” Enjolras says. “When we were both very young, for one of my birthdays. He said it was for protection, to always keep it near, but the cord it’s on was beginning to wear through – I put it in my pocket, but it must have fallen out when I had to run to work.”

Grantaire’s head is spinning. “That’s what they were after in your apartment,” he says. “An enchanted ring already keyed to you. Fuck. Fuck. That’s what was holding the spell back, before, when you were still wearing it close to your heart. Who gave it to you?”

“Cosette’s adopted father, I told you,” Enjolras says, eyes focused on Claquesous. Javert hasn’t taken the ring yet, still inspecting it. “He said his name was Jean, he and Cosette’s mother saved us when my family kicked us out, Cosette for having magic and me for refusing to abandon her. I was ten years old, and she was eight – her parents were magic users, they convinced her uncle Fauchelevent to raise us, but they couldn’t stay. I don’t remember that much about them – I actually don’t remember much about my early childhood at all. Why have Javert’s associates taken my ring? What do we do?”

Grantaire knows he’s barely breathing, but he has to focus so that he doesn’t begin to hyperventilate. Cosette’s parents, Fantine’s admission of having a love, once, Éponine’s mysterious years-ago case, a ring of Protection from Valjean, the Chief of the Second Bureau, God above, it’s probably made of Heavensteel – Claquesous with the ring, Montparnasse using it, it’s no wonder they’re going after the Council. This is enormous. A ring like that is incredibly powerful by itself, let alone enchanted further. If Javert touches it with his magic, though, it’ll likely kill him – Claquesous had been wrong, it isn’t meant to hold magic. It repels, that’s its purpose.

Javert must come to a decision because he reaches out, but then there’s a shriek and Cosette pushes him out of the way, throwing her blue magic in a net at Claquesous.

“Time to go, you stay here!” Grantaire yells, dropping his glamour and sprinting across the scant meters separating them from Javert’s door, Enjolras following despite his warning.

Claquesous is ripping the net off, still holding the ring, shreds of blue Light falling away. “I’m sorry, that was really violent,” Cosette tells Javert, drawing up a shield as the man stares at her, bewildered, “but if you’d touched that, you would’ve died. He’s a demon!”

Grantaire has the element of surprise, now, so he throws his own Light at Claquesous where it wraps around in thicker layers as he moves, but they’re still getting burned through. This demon isn’t as powerful as the Thenardiers, but he’s holding up the ring – if he puts it on, Grantaire’s magic won’t work on him, if its affiliation with Enjolras has faded. He’s not willing to take that chance, so he Creates another bubble, this time pushing it towards Claquesous’ hand.

Claquesous laughs, finally tearing free of the bindings. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Humans, close your eyes and hold on to something!” Grantaire yells, hoping against hope that they actually do it. He pulls his sword out of the ground – his own, glowing brightly, not Enjolras’ – and swipes at Claquesous, who holds the ring just out of reach.

“You’re the Angel who’s on the Council’s side, huh? Who’s fighting Montparnasse,” he says. “That’s you, scrawny you? Why are you on their side, anyway? It’s not like Montparnasse’s plan will work, but he’ll make a great servant of Hell.”

What the fuck? Grantaire thinks, lifting his sword. “Shut the fuck up,” he says.

“He really will,” Claquesous says, gruesome grin on his face. “He’s so convinced he’s right. I bet your blondie over there’s like that too, yeah? So foolish. And the one over here.” He turns to Cosette, whose eyes are determinedly closed, leering at her. One of her palms covers Javert’s eyes, as well.

A shot rings out. Claquesous screams, clutching at his head as he falls – a bullet to the head won’t hold him for long, but it’s long enough for Grantaire to slide his sword straight through the demon, metal hissing slightly.

He turns to see Enjolras watching him, gun arm lowered now. “Your sword is very bright,” he says. “Is that why you wanted my eyes closed?”

Grantaire shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be able to look at it at all,” he says.

“Mama told me that if I look at an Angel’s sword, I’ll lose my eyesight,” Cosette says. “But it’s probably because of Enjolras’ previous life. Can I open my eyes now?”

Grantaire draws the sword free, Claquesous’ body disintegrating before them – demons don’t do well with Heavensteel. He lets the sword melt away in his hands. Enjolras’ ring lies on the ground before him, atop a small pile of ashes. “Yeah, it’s safe,” he says. “Demon’s gone. Sword’s gone.”

Javert has been motionless the whole time, stock-still as Cosette uncovers his eyes. “A demon?” he asks, faint.

“That’s right,” Grantaire says.

“You,” Javert says, vehement. “You’re that man who turned on my streetlight, the other night.”

“Funny story,” Grantaire begins.

Cosette interrupts. “He’s the Angel I was talking about before we were interrupted,” she says. “But look, were you really cooperating with that demon? What are you trying to accomplish?”

Javert looks down at his hands. “I want to make the country safer,” he says, and then holds his chin up, glaring at Enjolras. “Your ilk only poisons it with how radical you are. Progress moves at its own pace, and if you try to speed it up, there will be an equal and opposite negative reaction – I wished to redirect your line of thinking from one that will have such destructive ends. I merely want things to move at a reasonable speed.”

“You’ve teamed up with a demon to kill me because you’re afraid of too much progress?” Enjolras asks, incredulous. “There’s nothing stable under Heaven, anyway – the world is too volatile for that. ‘Reason’ has too often been the argument of the fearful.”

“I teamed up with an Angel to help you see the truth,” Javert spits, then visibly forces himself calm. “Positive change is dangerous and destabilizing, and you are causing fractures in our government. I’ve never intended to kill you, I’m not a barbarian.”

“You just want to change my mind so much that I’m no longer myself,” Enjolras says. He and Javert have been getting closer and closer to one another, like two bulls about to lock horns. Grantaire puts a steadying hand on his arm.

“I don’t want you to meddle and cause problems,” Javert says, sneering. Enjolras fumes, and Grantaire tightens his grip.

“Stop fighting!” Cosette says, sharp enough that it startles them and they spring apart. “You’re acting like children when you need to work together. Javert, your Angel doesn’t realize he’s being manipulated by demons, and you don’t realize you’re being manipulated by him. Enjolras, recognize that if Javert is on our side, this will be a great deal easier, please. He’s a powerful magic user.”

Enjolras looks like he’s preparing to eat an entire lemon, but he swallows his pride and nods. Cosette is amazing, Grantaire decides.

“As if I would share a side with this reckless, foolish scum,” Javert says.

“Hey,” Grantaire says, stepping forward and letting his wings peek through his glamour. “You don’t know shit about him. You don’t even know shit about yourself, or about Montparnasse. Stop fucking talking.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says. “I can fight for myself.”

“You shouldn’t need to,” Grantaire says.

“He’s insane,” Javert says, but bites his tongue at Grantaire’s glare. “Why should I trust you, if Angels can manipulate and be manipulated? If you’re on his side? Why should I help you?”

“We’re fighting a battle for a better future,” Enjolras says. “Not a stable one.”

“What Enjolras means,” Cosette says, “is that you should help us because your spell to change their minds won’t work. It’ll kill them.”

Javert’s impassive face flinches slightly. “I didn’t want that,” he says. “Why would it happen?”

“Montparnasse’s work,” Grantaire says. “His little contribution to your crusade. Magic doesn’t change minds, but that energy must be transferred somewhere. I drew part of the curse out of Enjolras some time ago, because losing that ring meant he was more vulnerable and more quickly affected.”

Javert is silent for a long time. Grantaire crouches down to look at the ring more closely in the dim light of the streetlamps, sending up thanks for his Heaven-granted good eyesight. When he passes a hand over it, he can’t feel the warmth of any enchantment on it, so he thinks Claquesous’ untimely demise likely burned any of Hell’s magic off. If Enjolras puts it on now, it will hopefully stay on and keep him safe.

“I didn’t want to kill anyone,” Javert says slowly.

“Luckily for you, you haven’t yet,” Grantaire says, standing up. “But you will before all of this is over if you continue to work with Montparnasse. Unless he kills you, or one of his pets does, which is what almost just happened, by the way. Enjolras, put your ring on.”

“I need to think about this,” Javert says. “Do you have a plan?”

“Cut this off at the roots,” Enjolras says. Cryptic as ever. Very convincing.

“There is likely to be a battle,” Cosette admits. “But please, Javert. I’m begging you, do not continue to work with Montparnasse and these demons. You’ll die if you do.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire repeats, “put your ring on. For my peace of mind.”

Enjolras hesitates, but takes the ring from the ground and slips it on his finger. He immediately starts coughing and shaking, and Grantaire is at his side in an instant, fingertips seeking out his rabbit-quick pulse.

“Breathe in deeply through your nose for me and hold very still, come on,” Grantaire says, a series of curses running through his mind. The spell is still affecting Enjolras, he should’ve known – the ring is trying to force it out. He’s stupid, he’s stupid, he’s so useless.

“Is there anything I can do?” Cosette asks – she’s at their side, he doesn’t know when she got there – as Enjolras heaves, his nails digging crescents into Grantaire’s shoulder.

“Maybe,” Grantaire says. Javert stands and watches, probably not wanting to get contaminated by Enjolras’ ‘ilk,’ he thinks disdainfully. Enjolras is breathing, but he’s wracked by the coughs, his exhales coming ragged and harsh. “I’m going to take the curse out of you again. Please, let me.”

He lets a bubble form in his palm, ignoring Javert’s small step back. Good. He should be intimidated.

Enjolras breathes, stifling the cough. “Don’t, Grantaire,” he says, choked. “Look, we can help.”

“He’s right,” Cosette says, putting her hand over his own. “Jehan said – they taught us. We can help you, so you don’t have to hold that in. We can dissipate it, can’t we? Not forever, just this part that’s stuck in Enjolras’ body.”

“Burn that part of it with Light?” Grantaire asks. “Gavroche can’t do that without getting incredibly tired. We’re still new to this, you’re still new. I don’t know how to mesh our magics yet. It’s too dangerous, and I can handle containing it on my own.”

“Trust me,” Enjolras says, voice cracked by the coughs. He holds out a hand.

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire says, and shakes his head.

“Please,” Cosette says, palm up towards him. “Don’t be the martyr.”

“This is better. I’m sorry,” Grantaire repeats. “I’m sorry, Enjolras. Please, keep as still as you can.”

Enjolras is shaking too much from his breaths, so he can’t protest anymore – Grantaire draws the slippery magic out from where it’s already trying to push out of Enjolras’ mouth, letting it pool into his bubble. It comes easier now that he’s getting help from the ring, a slug only slightly smaller than the one he pulled out the first time.

He seals the bubble and Enjolras catches his breath, looking at him reproachfully. “We could have burned that,” he says. “We can still burn it. The way Gavroche did.”

Javert has backed into his own doorway. “Not here,” he says. “Leave. You’re not welcome in my house. Not even you, Cosette. Goodbye.”

He shuts his door. Cosette looks down at her feet, frowning. “He’s a good man,” she says. “I want him to see it. And Enjolras is right. Between the three of us, we can burn it. Jehan will guide us, won’t they, if we go to them?”

Grantaire deflates. If Jehan supervises – they might stand a chance of not accidentally blowing anything up. He can contain it, if things should go badly. “We can try.”

Enjolras gifts him with a brilliant smile, and he replies with his own paltry imitation. It’s all he can do.

The flat is quiet when they return, everyone working in their own corners, and Grantaire has to return the hopeful looks with a small shake of his head. No, they didn’t win over Javert. Yes, things continue to get even more complicated. Yes, Grantaire is once again in possession of a ball of dangerous magic which will do severe damage to his health if it pops.

Cosette pokes him in the side, and he lets out a sigh. “Jehan,” he says, “we need your help.”

Jehan moves away from where they’ve been conferring with Gavroche, who looks asleep but is clearly just faking it. “I’m at your service,” they say.

Enjolras motions towards the relative privacy of the kitchen, and they troop in. “Grantaire did something dumb again,” he says.

Jehan casts a sideways glance at Grantaire. “What is it now?” they ask.

“One of Montparnasse’s demons somehow got a hold of the ring of protection that had been Enjolras’, but we managed to kill him and get it back.”

“And when Enjolras put it on, it tried to shove all the tar out of him and you panicked and put it into a container and now you’re in danger again,” Jehan says, patting Grantaire’s cheek affectionately. “Dipshit.”

“Can’t we burn it up, like Gavroche did?” Cosette asks.

Jehan looks thoughtful. Grantaire shifts, uncomfortable, fingers brushing the bubble in his pocket. “I’ve no idea why they feel like they need to do it – it’s not like it’s going to affect me unless it bursts,” he says.

“You have enough power, between the three of you, if you’ve stabilized the connection,” Jehan says. “It’s a very different kind of spell from what you’ll have to do later, but you might be able to neutralize it with a variant. Gavroche might not be strong enough right now, and besides, she needs to save up on power for the true fight.”

Enjolras nods. He takes Cosette’s hand and Grantaire’s, palm warm and dry, and closes his eyes. Cosette rests her other hand on Grantaire’s shoulder.

“Grantaire,” Jehan says, “put the slug in the middle, please.”

He scowls, but does as Jehan says, and then takes Cosette’s hand. Her fingers are small, but her grip is firm.

Jehan steps back. “Concentrate the Light, and it will do as it does,” they say. “You do not need to give more than you have. You are all enough.”

Unhelpful and mysterious as usual, Grantaire thinks, but he blinks the magic in the air into sight. His own Light winds around him, hundreds of strands. He wills a few off, to wrap the bubble in, and Cosette sends her own blue sparks to join his, Enjolras holding their hands in a death grip.

The bubble is breaking – he can feel it dissolving into the air, and the slippery muck inside floating out of it as they pour Light in.

It’s been long minutes, but the slick magic stubbornly refuses to dissipate, forming and reforming before them. It stretches and slips away from the Light, and Grantaire grits his teeth. Enjolras’ fingers twitch against his, and he pushes with all his strength at the bubble. You’re the strength in their little triangle, he thinks at himself, so fucking act like it.

There’s a shout, and their magic shatters, leaving Grantaire’s breaths coming harsh and fast – what’s happening? The slug is in front of him, and it takes a dive for his chest before he can raise any protection, punching him with its force as it burrows in.

“Fuck,” he chokes out. This thing hurts like a _fucker,_ how had Enjolras been living with it for so long? Did it always feel like this? So much for the magical power triangle.

He feels like everything is somehow slowed around him, and time is skipping – Joly is there now, cutting open his shirt, which is ridiculous – he’s an Angel, he doesn’t need first aid that badly. He tries to open his mouth, make a joke about buying him dinner first, but he doesn’t think anything comes out. Cosette is holding one of her healing blue palms over his throat, which feels nice. He’s pretty sure that’s why he’s still managing to inhale and exhale.

Enjolras – Enjolras is beautiful, as always, desperate eyes looking at his own, gentler hands than he could ever imagine cradling his head in his lap and mouth saying words he can’t hear. Not desperate – Enjolras, desperate over him? Improbable at best.

Joly is biting his bottom lip now, worried, and Grantaire thinks it’s unfair that Joly should be worried about anyone. Joly’s a good Angel. He’s just one of those good beings that should never have to think about anything bad. It’s all very unfair.

More time passes this way, the magic vibrating very slightly all around him. He doesn’t think his own magic was meant to accept or combat a curse like this – maybe he’s dying? That’s unreasonable, to have come all this way and to die now. Jehan’s words echo around his head – _this story has a better ending than that._

Joly does something over him and time speeds up to a normal pace, his ribs feeling like they want to collapse inwards. He can breathe, Cosette’s hand still hovering over his neck, and Enjolras’ forehead is pressed to his own upside-down, lips forming words against his hair. Jehan holds his hand tightly.

“I’m sorry,” Jehan says.

“Ow,” Grantaire says weakly. His voice is shot, again; this case has not been good for his health, but he knew that when he started out. “Who do I have to bribe to get me something to drink?”

Éponine appears in view with a glass of water and she and Enjolras maneuver him into sitting and drinking it. Careful hands, always so careful with him. He doesn’t deserve it, but he has good friends.

“If I didn’t feel bad hitting an injured guy, I’d smack you for scaring the shit out of me like that,” Éponine says. “Again.”

“Sorry,” he says, giving her a small smile.

Joly leans back. “I’ve held it in stasis, but if you try to do major magic, there’s every chance you might burst it. We’ll have to wait until Gavroche is powerful enough to destroy it.”

“What went wrong?” Enjolras asks.

“Not strong enough to hold it,” Grantaire says. “I’m not. This isn’t going to work unless I get stronger.”

“Calm down, Batman,” Gavroche says, peeking out from behind Éponine. “It isn’t going to work unless you think it’s going to work, and unless you’re ready to give everything you have to your part in it. Then, it will work.”

Grantaire turns away. There’s no guarantee. He was a fool to hope, to pretend that this was a real solution, that he had some sort of Heaven-granted chance, but he can still make sure that Enjolras gets out of it alive. He’ll trade himself if he has to, for this spell to do what it must and prevent the curse from continuing. He’ll shake Heaven and Earth for it.

Enjolras is looking at him like he’s something important. He doesn’t think he can deal with that, on top of everything else.

“Have hope,” Jehan says, quiet beside him. “It’ll go a long way.”

“Okay,” he says. His ribs creak, giving him away for a liar.

Planning continues, despite the setbacks. They’re going through with the whole thing, pushing onwards despite misgivings and despite Javert refusing them.

Grantaire worries. He sits on the balcony, and he worries – he and Cosette and Enjolras were all burnt by their failed attempt, but he got the stiffness in his chest that marks him as one very doomed Angel. The humans will heal.

He’s not that much of an idiot. He knows if Montparnasse makes the first move, there will be no time for Gavroche to burn up the curse before Grantaire has to perform strong enough magic that Joly’s efforts break apart. He’s already going to die. He’d been assuming that in the back of his mind, but it’s a different thing to know it for a certainty.

The question is whether he’ll be able to pour enough Light into the spell before he goes out to make it work. Cosette can shape it, Enjolras can hold it – they’ll do fine if he gives everything. That at least grants him a sense of peace.

Enjolras interrupts his train of thought, stepping out to join him on the balcony. “You look pensive,” he says.

“Me? Perish the thought,” Grantaire says. “Shouldn’t you be doing whatever meditation Jehan is putting you through for this improbable scheme?”

“Don’t you believe in anything?” Enjolras asks, apparently choosing not to hear what he just said. “We can make this work.”

“It’s rude to answer a question with a question,” Grantaire says.

“It’s rude not to answer a question at all,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire looks away. Sand trickles down in the hourglass in his mind – if he stretches his senses, he’ll hear the ticking of Paris’ colossal clocks. He doesn’t. “I believe in you,” he says, disconcerting memories only making themselves known after he says it. The second time.

“I’m just one part of the triangle,” Enjolras says. “We’ll all do the most we can.”

And we’ll still fail, Grantaire doesn’t say. His time is running out, he doesn’t say. The distance between them only serves to compound the ache in his chest, he doesn’t say. It always does.

Does he dare disturb the universe? “Enjolras, in case we die,” Grantaire starts, then pauses, swallows. When I die. He’s had more near-true-death encounters on this case than he has in a long time, and still he gambles. Enjolras is looking back at him, calm, anger banked to a low fire in his eyes, waiting for him to respond. “This is in case we die. You need to tell me to stop. Please.”

Enjolras says nothing, watching him, and Grantaire puts a hand on his cheek, daring this much, and pushes closer when he still isn’t met with resistance. A moment of stillness, and Grantaire fits his mouth to Enjolras’, easy as breathing. His lips are sweet and tart as the first apples of late summer, and Grantaire feels like he’s falling, the big fall, down to mortal Earth, even though his feet are firmly on the ground. His wings unfold and stretch without any input from his brain in the long seconds that pass, until Enjolras pulls away smiling helplessly, eyes tracking all over.

“They’re huge,” he whispers. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stretch them out completely, not even – then, from what I remember. Grantaire, they’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

“And you,” Grantaire replies, complicated with melancholy, “can’t possibly be serious. You’re the star come down to this world to teach us all how to burn. You and Cosette, you’re sparks. The rest of us are just the kindling.”

Enjolras shakes his head. “I’m just a person, and I’ve never been more than that,” he says. “I keep trying to tell you – I don’t want your devotion. I’m only human.”

Grantaire smiles. “I never asked you to be anything else,” he says, Enjolras’ pulse point steady underneath his thumb. “Only to be Enjolras.”

“That isn’t enough. I need to be other things, too,” Enjolras says. “For this to work, I need to be more than that, I need to be stronger than I was before, in any lifetime. We need to be strong, or we’ll all die, if Jehan is right. We can do it.”

That’s always been his problem, Grantaire thinks – not understanding that he doesn’t have to be more than what he is to do that. Enjolras is holy, more deserving of love than Grantaire can ever hope to be, Enjolras is worth so much more than him; Enjolras is perfect in his imperfection, in all his stubbornness persistent through every lifetime and his ridiculous compassion and loyalty and his penchant for lost things, lost people, lost causes. Grantaire knows it all, could paint a thousand studies of Enjolras out of Light and never come close to the real one wrought in flesh and bone before him, and he’ll never get another chance anyway. All Enjolras will need to do, he knows, is be himself. Jehan said that – Jehan is always right.

Then again, if Enjolras forgot how to believe in the future he sees, he would cease to be Enjolras. “I know,” Grantaire says, instead of voicing his thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says, knuckles brushing Grantaire’s cheek. “This is unfair. I don’t – I’m missing memories. I’m not the Enjolras you remember.”

“I’m not sorry,” Grantaire says. “It’s all right. You’re enough. You’re always enough.” The words fall out before he can catch them, so he hopes that they mean something.

“After this, when we have more time, when there aren’t distractions, then,” Enjolras begins, then hesitates.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Grantaire says, doing his best to dredge up a tired smile.

“Shut up, I never do, and obviously you still don’t understand,” Enjolras says, and reels him back in to press their lips together, brief and hard, a seal on a vow. He buries his face in Grantaire’s neck, and mumbles, “That one was in case we live.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says, not fooling either of them but letting himself return the embrace. It has to be enough. He’s not so oblivious that he thinks his life expectancy is longer than a few weeks, with the curse only worsening the toll which the spell will take. His death knell has already sounded.

“You’ll see,” Enjolras says, an echo of a faded memory, and gently extracts himself, gesturing back inside. Belief makes him so bright. “Let’s go.”

What in the universe can Grantaire do but follow him?

The humans sleep as the Angels plan, Jehan spreading maps of Paris on the kitchen table. Grantaire thinks they’re all kidding themselves, imagining that they’ll be the ones to control the field and not just doing what they can to stem catastrophe.

Jehan’s head is bent together with Gavroche’s and Éponine’s, Musichetta and Joly flanking an asleep Bossuet on the couch. They’ve put some shielding on the glass of the balcony doors, but it won’t hold for more than a couple shots. Magic was never meant to withstand guns, even Angels’ magic.

Bahorel is quiet, sitting next to Grantaire and painting his nails. Earlier, he’d been filing them with a small dagger pulled from who-knows-where on his person, but when he’d finished he’d admitted that he liked the idea of adding some color. Poppy-red, a small happiness. Still good for fighting.

Enjolras is asleep on one of the armchairs, despite Grantaire’s warning him towards bed. “You’ve got it pretty bad,” Bahorel says, voice low and eyes following Grantaire’s line of vision.

“What gave me away in two centuries of pining?” Grantaire asks.

Bahorel snorts. “You’ve given up on any subtlety,” he says. “Not that you started with much.”

“It won’t matter in a few days, anyway,” Grantaire replies.

Bahorel smacks him in the shoulder. “You’ll survive, loverboy,” he says. “You still owe me a fight for giving me those dark-as-fuck paintings, you fucking martyr.”

“Here I was, trying to do something kind for one of my good friends,” Grantaire says, “and this is how you show your gratitude for my poignant last deeds in Heaven. Bad manners, Bahorel.”

“They’re not your last deeds, R,” he replies. “The point of all this is we won’t ever know again what’s coming, but I know that much. You and Enjolras and Cosette are too strong for that.”

“Wasn’t strong enough to destroy the spell,” Grantaire mutters.

Bahorel looks at him oddly. “That’s not your part, anyway,” he says, but before Grantaire can ask for clarification, the doorbell rings.

Enjolras stirs from his sleep, eyes blearily opening, but Grantaire gets to the door first. The peephole shows Javert looking stormy in the hall, so he builds a careful shield before saying anything.

Seconds pass before he finishes the magic. “What do you want, Javert?” he yells through the door, adding the name for everyone else’s benefit.

“I’ve come to offer my services,” Javert says.

Glancing around for reactions, Grantaire finds a shrug from Jehan and similar looks of disdain from Gavroche and Enjolras.

The doorknob rattles, and Grantaire steps back. “I know how to fight demons, and I know these demons especially well,” Javert calls. “I was perhaps too hasty in trusting them to help me.”

“Yeah, it’s usually a sign that you’re too invested in the wrong causes when literal servants of Hell are lining up to help you,” Gavroche says, under her breath. Éponine flicks her on the forehead.

Enjolras gives him a tiny nod, and Grantaire exhales, pulling open the door. “Why did you change your mind?” Grantaire asks.

“There are innocents here,” Javert says. “Montparnasse will attack at midnight, in this flat.”

Grantaire can feel the blood drain from his face. He’d been hoping for at least a few more days, and all he has is hours? He needs to perform the spell again in hours, when he isn’t even strong enough to be part of the triangle, to be the spell’s backbone.

A soothing palm on the back of his neck, thumb rubbing small circles into his skin. Enjolras stands behind him, nodding seriously at Javert. Common enemies make friends of the oddest people.

“If you betray us this time,” Éponine says, “you won’t live to tell the tale.”

“This time?” Javert asks, brow furrowing – he doesn’t remember.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jehan says, before Éponine can get angry. “Now we’re all awake and here, we can practice more of the spells – you can join in, if you like, or watch.”

“I’ve primarily come with information,” Javert says. “Montparnasse plans to rebel against Heaven after defeating the Angel among you. He has lost sight of God.”

Grantaire exchanges a glance with Gavroche. “I assume when you say ‘the Angel among you’ you mean me, since there are a few of us here,” he says. “And we’re aware of that.”

“Why aren’t you trying to stop him?” Javert demands. “He thinks he can destroy the Archangels! The way he talks – he wants to end so many lives!”

“We are going to stop him,” Enjolras says. His fingers are so light on Grantaire’s skin.

“We’re also going to neutralize the Archangels,” Jehan says, intrepid. “They are not the authority we need to answer to. We need some time.”

Javert takes a step back. “You’re all mad,” he says. “They are the law of Heaven! Who would step into their place? Who would shape destiny?”

“God,” Gavroche says, power lacing her voice. “As it should have always been. There is no authority more sovereign.”

“Is Heaven not in need of laws?” Javert asks, shaking his head. “No, I have given you my information, I cannot offer further help. Not if you would throw your lives away on this.”

He turns, and Enjolras makes to catch his arm, but Combeferre holds him back. “Let him go,” he says, Javert heading for the door.

“He’s choosing a way out, which makes him a smarter person than most of us–” Grantaire says, before there are two twin bangs and Gavroche cries out in pain, her knees buckling. He’s at her side in an instant, throwing up as strong a shield as he thinks he can manage. Jehan adds their own strength, and Cosette runs out from the bedroom to add another layer in front.

Gavroche is gritting her teeth as the bullet pops out and the skin of her arm knits back together. “Son of a fucking fuck,” she says. “Bullets fucking hurt. They followed Javert here. We need out, Jehan. Jehan!”

“I’m on it,” Jehan says. “Feuilly, Cosette, and Courfeyrac, best bubble you can manage, now. Get it around all of us, come on.”

They exchange glances but do as he asks, calm blue light encompassing the room’s inhabitants in waves, giving Grantaire a feeling of weightlessness as bullets put cracks in the shields. The noise is muffled, and Jehan is shouting something, linking hands with Musichetta and Éponine. There is a rushing noise around them, strong magic whooshing in his ears as the threads of Light thrum with spells.

“Heads down, everybody, and hold on to someone!” Gavroche yells, voice cracking with pain as another bullet punches through the shield and clips her knee.

Enjolras grips Grantaire’s hand, his other arm still linked with Combeferre’s. Bahorel’s fingers are fisted in his shirt, Cosette holding onto Courfeyrac and Marius while Bossuet, Joly, and Feuilly form a triangle, nobody left on their own.

Fuck, Grantaire thinks. Javert is holding onto the door he never made it out of, snarling as the magic rips at him. “Combeferre, grab Javert!” Grantaire calls.

Combeferre nods, reaching out his free hand. Javert looks suspiciously at it, hesitating. “Make your choice!” Enjolras calls. “We’ve made ours!”

Javert clasps the hand at last, and the apartment around them disappears, their bubble fading out of existence.

Things are very bright around him and he’s only conscious of the hands in his own for long moments before they’re all deposited in a field. Jehan, Éponine and Musichetta break apart, looking absolutely wrecked. The wheat – unharvested, despite the approaching autumn – sways gently at this incursion on its peaceful existence.

Grantaire untangles himself from the groaning string of humans and Bahorel he was attached to and jogs over. That was a massive spell – how will they fight? “Minimizing casualties,” Jehan pants out. “Been practicing that one for a while. Didn’t expect so many passengers.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Éponine says, shaking her head. “Did it. Montparnasse will catch up soon, though, and we’ve gotta be ready. Joly, use your Gift to make sure the humans can look at our swords without blinding themselves – they’re going to have to. We’re only the first line of defense.”

“How many demons does this guy have?” Bahorel asks, shaking himself off. Joly is granting every human temporarily-bettered eyes, carefully blessing their eyelids with a whispered spell. Enjolras looks like it changes nothing about his worldview to see all the magic around him. “Fucking shit.”

“Gavroche, you need to burn up the curse in Grantaire now, if Montparnasse is following us so closely,” Enjolras says. “He needs to be able to fight.”

Grantaire frowns. “She’s not strong enough yet, I’m not risking her for me,” he says. “We’ll be fine.”

“We need this to work,” Enjolras says. “You’re the lynchpin.”

“I damn well know that, Enjolras,” Grantaire says, voice harsh. “I know I have to be the strength at the center.”

Gavroche, glancing between them, puts a hand on each of their shoulders. “First of all, you’re both wrong,” she says. “And secondly, if I do that spell now, both Grantaire and I will need recovery time that we don’t have the luxury of.”

“How are we going to do the spell, then?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire’s chest feels peach-bruised with the love inside of it. “I’m strong enough to do it,” he says. “Don’t worry, Enjolras.”

“I know you can do it, I just want you to survive after it’s over,” Enjolras says. Grantaire stares at him – Enjolras, worried about him? “Don’t you know? I keep trying to tell you–”

A crack resounds and the ground moves beneath their feet, making everyone fall gracelessly into the stalks of wheat. “Hold that thought,” Grantaire says, and sees Montparnasse rise from the field and speed towards them, his demon friends not far behind him.

Bahorel throws a spell immediately, his Light sticking to Montparnasse and the others, weighing them down and constricting them in place.

“Hell’s children first, then Montparnasse, then the triangle,” Jehan instructs, before they draw out their own sword. “He can still be saved.”

“He’s been trying to kill all of us,” Javert says, incredulous. “He cares only for power!”

Jehan only raises an eyebrow. “That alone does not condemn him to Hell. Nothing is impossible with God,” they reply.

“You really are all mad,” Javert says.

“Help, or run,” Feuilly says. “There’s no time for anything else.”

Javert tips his chin up, haughty. “You need my help,” he says.

“We don’t need it,” Cosette says. Javert looks down at her, expression softening into something more human – she is wild and brave. Nobody could accuse her of needing anyone. “But if you’re offering, your chance is now.”

The Thenardiers hurl their magic in a net towards Grantaire and his friends, but Javert raises his own shield quicker, a darker blue Light than Cosette’s and sparking with power. “It’s too late for much else,” he says.

There is stillness for fleeting moments, demons hacking at the shield as the Angels draw their swords and the humans ready their own weapons. The handle feels as strange as it always does, he’s not meant to be wielding weapons, but he doesn’t have time to lament anything because the barrier splinters into pieces and Montparnasse and his demons are upon them.

Javert is the first to fall, the Thenardiers going after him mercilessly despite Joly running defense – they bundle him into a spell and he drops, unconscious, to the ground. Joly curses, checks Javert’s pulse, and goes after them with Musichetta and Bossuet. Marius and Combeferre are unloading bullets into the demons, trying to slow them down, as the others follow up with spells or blades. Enjolras and Cosette are fighting for now, Enjolras at Feuilly’s back and Cosette at Éponine’s, but it is not yet time for them to try Jehan’s spell.

Grantaire circles Montparnasse, who is gathering power between his hands as the battle goes on around them, not disturbing their little bubble. “You know the Archangels are corrupt, Grantaire, you know God’s not around anymore. What I’m doing will merely do away with some of the arbitrary boundaries we’ve got. If I have to sacrifice some humans to do it, it won’t be that much of an issue. They’ll come back, if they’re really supposed to,” Montparnasse says. He must think he’s being reasonable.

“Killing begets only more killing, Montparnasse,” Grantaire says. “This is not the way to change things anywhere.”

“I should’ve known you’d defend the humans,” Montparnasse says, lips curling into a sneer. “Always so in love with Enjolras, weren’t you? Couldn’t save him last time, but you can now. I can promise not to harm him, I can lift the curse. We’re doing God’s work, aren’t we? You don’t want to let him get hurt. One sentence and all of it stops. I’ll call back the Thenardiers and the demons, but I need a second Angel to help me break down the Council.”

Love means the fear of loss, and the fear of loss is a paralytic, but that’s all bullshit, really. He squares his shoulders. “Éponine told you to fuck off,” Grantaire says, steadier than he feels. “And I’ll say the same. So I think we’ve both known love’s myriad offerings.”

“Love makes you weak, Grantaire,” Montparnasse says. “You have nothing to lose from helping me, but if you don’t help me, you’ll lose everything.”

He could laugh, as a hundred gleaming facets click into place. Montparnasse still doesn’t understand. It’s not _nisi Dominus frustra_ , in the end, it’s _Deus caritas est_. Éponine had been right, and he and Fantine had been wrong. He’s been a fool.

The choice was always his to make, said Jehan, and he finally understands: this is no choice at all.

He stoops, and from the ground he pulls out the other sword, the one that he’s never used – red-tinted blade marking it as the weapon of the Red Guardian. “That’s not how it works,” he says, and Montparnasse is quick to draw his own blade, and their small circle becomes loud with the clanging of Heavensteel.

Grantaire can feel that they’re an almost-even match, but he’s buoyed with laughter – love makes him so much stronger. He’s protecting Enjolras with every motion of his sword.

Love makes you fear loss, it’s true. Grantaire’s terrified of loss. The idea of losing Enjolras again is so unbearable that he cannot fathom it – not Enjolras, not again, not when he’s so close to understanding. Fear doesn’t mean he can’t fight; it means he just can’t let what he fears happen.

Love makes you fear loss. Love makes you stronger for it.

Love is a paralytic. Love is the only true movement there is.

Love, Grantaire understands, is paradoxical and terrible and wonderful. It’s soothing and it’s awful, and it comes in waves that are too much for him to handle. Sometimes, he gets knocked over by how big his emotions are. Love is both destruction and creation, the final unity of joy and suffering, the machinery of the whole complex universe.

Love got him this far, and it’s damn well going to carry him through.

He can see Combeferre and Marius fighting their way through some of Montparnasse’s pet demons as Musichetta and Joly and Bossuet dance circles around a magic user acolyte. He can see Éponine, face drawn in anger at anyone who would dare lay a hand on her Protected or any of his friends, her wings spread to their full majestic width as her sword arcs, and Gavroche, who flits in and out of individual battles with well-placed flares of magic. He can see Feuilly and Courfeyrac making a defensive triangle with Bahorel as their third point, moving steadily through everything brave or unwise enough to be in their way, towards the corner from which the Thenardiers throw increasingly desperate spells.

He can see Jehan, glowing near the center of the field as they give orders and say old words, ancient words of devastation and prophecy and time, when anyone gets close enough to be dangerous. Jehan was never one of the Bureau of Protection, but they’re making a good run of it now, keeping the area clear. Enjolras and Cosette stand in the center of it all, hands linked, and when he lets himself see, the threads of Light around them are growing and expanding, getting stronger as Enjolras anchors Cosette so she can spread the magic out, soak it into the Earth. The look of concentration on Cosette’s face is so familiar – _I’d had a love once,_ Fantine had told him, and _I know someone with wings, we’re related,_ said Cosette. It’s an impossible, incredible web that they’ve spun. Grantaire’s fingers tingle with the push, magic returning into the ground which it came from – Enjolras is staring at him, and smiles the smile Grantaire would wrench apart reality for. It’s time, he’s saying. The plan. The others gradually make their way to the edges after defeating anything in their way, the magnifying glass for their gamble.

He can see all his friends, and he loves all of them so fucking much, and Montparnasse looks like he didn’t quite prepare for what he got himself into. Grantaire pities him. Jehan’s words run together like watercolors in his mind.

“Trust me in this, Montparnasse,” he says, through swings, “when I say we’re about to do something that will give destiny back to us. I’m about to do something. The Council will fall.”

A vicious swipe – Montparnasse draws blood, Grantaire’s ribs grazed, but he’s wild. “I trust you in nothing,” Montparnasse declares. Cosette’s magic continues lancing through him like fire, Enjolras’ solidity complementing it in tune.

“We have the three points we need,” Grantaire says, only defending against the strikes, now. “We write our own future. We decide. Trust me.”

Montparnasse is tired, and he knows his side is losing, but he is stubborn. Still, he lifts his chin and slips into a battle stance. “I make my stand here,” he says. “Make of that what you will, and perhaps it will change something.”

Grantaire smiles back, inclines his head, and lets his Gift shine out through the sword that isn’t really his, Cosette’s courage and Enjolras’ strength thick in his chest, in his head, in his hands. The curse residing between his lungs breaks and splinters into hurt, but he ignores it, the metal in his hands whistling through the air. This time, when their blades meet, there is a wrenching noise, and an enormous and incredible light blooming from the steel, so strong his eyes hurt from looking, but he’s still smiling, even as he loses his grip and the sword falls from his fingers and he’s falling, but it’s okay. It’s all right.

Maybe this is death, he thinks, words plodding like raindrops through his mind. Around him, there are only echoes and fleeting sensations.

_I can offer you peace, the ultimate ending, where you will never worry or suffer again_ , he hears. It sounds like it’s coming from everywhere, floating through Grantaire as he himself floats. Everything is very bright.

_Or the remainder of a human life. No wings and no immortality. No destined path to walk. Simple humanity, all its inherent danger and beauty and pain and awe. It is your choice, Grantaire._

He feels so nice right where he is, in this fuzzy middle ground. There are lights around him, and when he reaches out to touch one, it explodes into a sunburst but it doesn’t hurt his fingers. He’s not even really sure he has fingers. Things are soft and warm and peaceful.

A choice, Jehan had said. They’d underestimated, though. He’s had so many – so many crossroads he’s arrived at, and so many choices he’s made. He’s tired of it. Hasn’t he already made himself clear?

_One last fork in the road. Choose._

He sees everyone around him, Angels and humans. Fantine and Valjean are there, too, now, threads of magic connecting them to everyone on the battlefield as they do what they can to heal or change – he can’t be sure – and Gavroche is with them. Gavroche, not a Protector, but the Chief of Prophecy. All the hopes of change, a spectrum of wonders she’s seen ahead of them and decided to make reality. He sees Enjolras finally hefting his own sword again, feeling the rightness of the weight in his palm as Cosette levels finishing spells at the remaining demons. Enjolras, the Red Guardian once more, defender of humanity, standing aflame over two fallen bodies, one of which Grantaire thinks might be his own. The air around him begins to itch, and he wants to take the memory and fan it until it burns everything down, all the peace he’s soaking in. It’s not enough – how could peace be enough, after all he’s given to see that his fate is his to make? He’s never been too arrogant to take what is being freely given, and he’s not finished yet.

He’s tired, but he’s made it this far. He takes a deep breath.

Love, he thinks. I’d choose love. _Deus caritas est_. Give me a human lifetime, let me fill it with love. That’s all there is, I know, that’s my creed. There’s nothing else. Every single time.

_Every single time, indeed_ , the voice says – he hears a smile in the words.

“I told you that I had a love once,” Fantine is telling him, still in that space where everything is beautifully lit up – or maybe he’s on Enjolras’ balcony, or maybe his own from many years ago, with tiny red flowers peaking out from the window-box. He’s painted those flowers before, a long time ago, he’s certain of it.

“You did,” he says. “Wasn’t much of a warning, though, was it?”

“It was enough,” Valjean says, putting a hand on his shoulder. They make quite a pair, Grantaire thinks, and he’s glad for them. He’s never realized what a boon it must be, to find someone after you’ve lost everything and everyone else, to be your charm against the ever-impending dark, to help you navigate your tiny boat on the great wide ocean. He’s happy for them.

“You’ll be a human, the same as this Enjolras,” Fantine says. “That was your choice, but ours is to say goodbye to you. Heaven needs guidance, and we’re neither of us ready to move on quite yet.”

We won’t see you again for a good long time, Grantaire hears in the words. “I’ll miss you two,” he says. “Even though you advised me against everything I’ve done, I’ll still miss you.”

“We’ll see each other,” Valjean says, grinning at him. “The First Bureau’s messy right now, and nobody’s been writing down prophecies for the past few days. We’ve a backlog, but Gavroche will be handling it, since she’s been gallivanting with you trying to make this work for so many years. She’s coming back, and all Bureau servants will be free to stay and rebuild or move on. We’ll build it, this time, as equals. Courage, and strength, and love, not three Bureaus controlling the future. That’s not ours to choose. It’s going to be a better way to live.”

“Good,” Grantaire says. Fuck destiny, anyway.

“But we’ll miss you too,” Fantine says. “I’m glad I could know you for so long. It’s been an honor, hero. If you still had your wings and the Council still stood, you’d probably get a medal from them for such good handling, but as things stand you’ll have to live without it.”

“I’ll survive,” Grantaire says.

“We know,” Valjean says. They both hug him and then they’re fading – or he is. The colors swim, and he chases after their warmth until he can’t anymore, and everything is light.

Grantaire opens his eyes to Enjolras’ worried face peering down at the familiar feather he’s twirling in his hands. His back hurts something awful. He chances a look down and sees that his torso is covered in bandages, the ring of protection glowing on its leather cord around his neck, likely put there by Enjolras. It hurts to breathe and he feels like he hasn’t eaten anything in eons and maybe got run over by a truck a few times for good measure, but Enjolras is here, next to him, in this room, so he tries to grin.

Enjolras looks up at the motion, and his eyes widen. “R? Grantaire?” Enjolras asks. His sword – Grantaire’s adopted sword – is propped against the bed, gleaming and not sinking back into the ground like it should.

Grantaire smiles, lifts a weak hand to Enjolras’ face, lets his thumb trace the cheekbone. “Hello, Enjolras,” he says, glancing at the feather. “Glad you kept that safe for me.”

Enjolras exhales noisily and presses their hands together, eyes squeezing shut and then blinking open like he’s holding emotions at bay. “I found it first,” he says. “And I let it stay there, under Combeferre’s pillow. I didn’t tell anyone. I figured you had a reason.”

“And then he gave it to you,” Grantaire says. “After our wild plan.”

“He knew I’d seen it,” Enjolras says. “Combeferre always knows. He gave it to me a few days ago.”

Enjolras has been here for a few days? “How long have I been asleep? Did the plan work?”

“It worked, though most of you – most of us were injured, one way or another. Joly, Éponine, and Jehan got the worst of it, besides you, but Bahorel and Musichetta are bad enough to be in here as well – most of you, ah, fell. There were a pair of Angels who came at the end of the battle, did something that took the magic away from you, took your wings – then they were just gone. I tried to go after them, but Gavroche stopped me, and Cosette still needed my help. Most of us humans were lucky, but Courfeyrac was hurt pretty badly. Javert woke up unwell but promptly disappeared. But it’s done, and none of us died. When your blades collided, the spell rebounded and expanded, like Jehan said. Gavroche seemed – proud. She said it’d worked, then vanished. Montparnasse doesn’t have the power to damage anymore, since he fell as well, and Cosette is sleeping off being a conduit of magic in the room next door. She did most of the heavy lifting, I think that’s why I’m not as tired.”

“You were a conduit too,” Grantaire says. His voice is shot. “We needed both of you, for balance. Magical bravery, nonmagical strength. Jehan said – Jehan said so. Jehan is always right.”

“We needed you, too,” Enjolras says. “I always need you. Every lifetime. Don’t you get it yet?”

“Enlighten me,” Grantaire says, eyes tired even after so little time open. He stubbornly refuses to close them, since Enjolras is here, and he thinks that means Enjolras _remembers_ everything, after all this time. He’s so bright – Grantaire tries, but he can’t see the Light threading through the air anymore, and he’s hungry enough to eat anything, and he knows if he turns around there won’t be wings attached to him, and he’s going to be sore for who-knows-how-long – but Enjolras is still shining.

“We needed love. You, that’s you. You’re the love, Grantaire, you put so much love into the world, that’s how we changed it. The third component. That’s what the spell wanted. Couldn’t do it with only magic, it wouldn’t have worked – it’s like Jehan told us. We needed you. I needed you. I can’t believe I ever thought I didn’t. Three times, Grantaire, three times I’ve let this happen, and three times I was a fool for it, Christ, it’s taken me two centuries. That’s long enough for the Earth to complete more than sixty thousand turns, I've been here in this godforsaken chair doing that fucking math, isn’t that long enough to realize I was wrong? Don’t ever frighten me like that again,” Enjolras whispers, voice having steadily lowered. “I thought – I thought you were gone. I thought you’d gotten your peace, gotten forever on the third round, and I knew it was selfish to hope you hadn’t, but I don’t think I’ve ever hoped so hard. I prayed. I didn’t believe in God when I was an Angel of Heaven and I don’t know if I believe now, but I prayed for you to come back. I thought you had _gone_.”

“And left you behind?” Grantaire asks, unable to stop the grin blossoming across his face like a tiny supernova at the barrage of words. “I would never.”

Enjolras shakes his head, and Grantaire sees wetness on his cheeks, but he’s willing to overlook it because then Enjolras is pressing their lips together and their teeth clack because they’re both smiling wide and it’s messy and it’s imperfect and it’s the most gigantic thing in the world. All the darkness he’s ever seen couldn’t hold up against the sunshine that has all-at-once been given into his keeping.

“You’re impossible – I can’t believe you,” Enjolras says. “Please stay.”

Grantaire takes Enjolras’ hand and kisses his knuckles, soft and warm, and he wants to find out everything he can do to replicate this look of quiet adoration in Enjolras’ eyes. He wants to spend all the time he’s been given trying to evoke it. He’ll paint and paint and paint until he gets it almost-right, and even then it won’t be enough so he’ll have to keep trying, keep aiming for the real thing. The colors will be bright, completing the piece, filling in all the blank spots with brilliance.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

Deep under Paris, a ring of sunflowers blooms in a library full of books and dust and echoes.

The flowers are tall and graceful. They cast light, and they chase away the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious about the 500000 references I made and other ~behind the scenes~ info, there's a list [here](http://keensers.tumblr.com/lmbbnotes), because I am nothing if not meticulous, apparently. And because there's too much to list here. Also, if you just want to say hi or chat about anything (fic-related or unrelated), I'm on [tumblr](http://keensers.tumblr.com/)!


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